• Question: what in your opinion what will be the best way to generate clean energy in the future

    Asked by tdaddy to Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel, Roisin on 14 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      For the next 10-20 years, I think Ireland should focus on wind turbines (both in the countryside and out at sea) along with solar panels. If you want to see a breakdown of how Ireland can produce all the energy it needs just using clean energy sources, go to http://thesolutionsproject.org/, click on international and then click Ireland.

      Globally, I think we need more nuclear fission reactors. The waste management will be a problem, but not as big a problem as global warming is.

      Finally (and this is really a dream I don’t expect to come true) I hope we figure out nuclear fusion within the next 50 years. Fusion would solve all of our problems and has (nearly) no waste products (the nearly is because it produces pesky neutrons). But I’m not confident we’ll figure out fusion in time, so we should focus on wind/solar/sea energy in the near future.

      (Just for clarity, we are working on figuring out nuclear fusion with a project called ITER https://www.iter.org/. Fingers crossed it works).

    • Photo: Michel Destrade

      Michel Destrade answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      Solar energy: not the best place here! Wind: not efficient enough in my opinion. So I’d say systems relying on water motion. Dams work real well, but we don’t have high enough mountains in Ireland. There’s a lot of research going on on how to harvest the energy from sea waves to generate electrical energy, with a big European grant in UCD on that very topic for example. No shortage of waves here!

    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      I think Mark and Michel have covered this question excellently: solar panels, wind turbines, hydroelectricity and wave power seem to be the logical way forward. Wave power would be ideal for an island country like Ireland as Michel mentioned, but thus far it’s been difficult to come up with ways to sustainably harness wave power, so hopefully that project in UCD will have some success with coming up with an answer.

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