Abstract
The Republic of Ireland, like many other countries is trying to diversify energy sources to counteract environmental, political and social concerns. Bioethanol from domestically grown agricultural crops is an indigenously produced alternative fuel that can potentially go towards meeting the goal of diversified energy supply. The Republic of Ireland’s distribution of existing soils and agricultural land-uses limit arable crop land to around 10% of total agricultural area. Demand for land to produce arable crops is expected to decrease, which could open the opportunity for bioethanol production. Bioethanol production plants are required to be of a sufficient scale in order to compete economically with other fuel sources, it is important therefore to determine if enough land exists around potential ethanol plant locations to meet the potential demands for feedstock. This study determines, through the use of a developed GIS based model, the potential quantities of feedstock that is available in the hinterlands of nine locations in the Republic of Ireland. The results indicate that three locations can meet all its feedstock demands using indigenously grown sugarbeet, while only one location can meet its demands using a combination of indigenous wheat and straw as the two locally sourced feedstocks.
Highlights
Bioethanol is a renewable transport fuel with the potential to go towards solving problems related to climate change, energy security and declining farm incomes
When the locations were modeled for the potential of their respective hinterlands to supply the required area of land to meet the needs of an ethanol plant based on sugarbeet as a feedstock it was found, that under the assumptions in this study, three of the nine locations could meet their feedstock demands within 100 km
Using a combination of the former sugarbeet area, set-aside area and excess arable land, 3 of the nine locations considered could supply the needs of a large scale bioethanol plant within a
Summary
Bioethanol is a renewable transport fuel with the potential to go towards solving problems related to climate change, energy security and declining farm incomes (despite projected increases in the global human population, farm incomes relative to outside the agricultural sector have fallen in the Republic of Ireland, and are projected to fall further, especially in the livestock sector due to increasing supplies of raw food products from low cost producers outside of the EU [10]). In the world’s largest ethanol producing country, the US, the average annual capacity of commercial corn ethanol plants in 2007 was 189 million liters per year [5]. A 2002 survey of 21 US ethanol plants recorded an ethanol output capacity range of between 34 and 340.65 million liters [4]
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