The half-day event included presentations from a number of senior scientists based at the University of Notre Dame. Their participation was linked to this weekend’s American football game between Notre Dame and the US Navy team, which will be played at the Aviva Stadium tomorrow. Yesterday’s proceedings were introduced by Prof Peter Kilpatrick, the McCloskey dean of engineering at the Indiana-based university. He introduced Mr Rabbitte who began to speak only to be interrupted by the protesters.
...Ireland had a “total dependence” on fossil fuels but the rapid introduction of renewables, particularly wind turbines, could help reduce this, he said. Geopolitical uncertainty meant the country remained exposed to energy “shocks” and needed to escape this. “We have seen good progress in the past 10 years,” he said, with a tripling of wind capacity. Several speakers talked about the potential of solar power, including Dr Mazhar Bari, co-founder of Irish company SolarPrint. “In Ireland, people believe there is no sunlight here, but Ireland gets the same amount as Germany,” he said.
New flexible panels were being developed that could be rolled out or even painted onto surfaces to produce solar electricity. Total world energy demand was 15 or 16 trillion watts but the sun each day delivered 120 trillion watts to the Earth, said Prof Prashant Kamat of Notre Dame. Even if the countries of the world built a new 1 billion-watt nuclear power plant each day, this could not keep pace with the estimated doubling of demand over the next 35 years, he said.
“Clean energy is the way to go for the future,” said Prof Don MacElroy, principal investigator at UCD working on solar energy conversion. Solar power could be collected during the day and used to split water into hydrogen fuel, create chemicals or charge batteries – storage methods that could be used to supply electricity at night.
Dick Ahlstrom, Irish Times, August 31, 2012
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