Author: Richard Tol

Environmental regulation and enforcement

Two weeks ago, the Irish Times reported that MoneyPoint regularly breached its IPPC license but failed to inform the EPA. I was waiting for a follow-up article, like “Plant Closed, Chief Engineer Jailed, Company Fined”, but then I realized that I’m in Ireland still.

If a coal-fired boiler runs in steady state, it emits little more than water vapour (white smoke) and carbon dioxide (invisible). However, if it is starting up or winding down, combustion is incomplete and smoke turns black. Black smoke contains a mix of chemicals which not only twist your tongue but also cause respiratory problems, cancer, degenerative diseases, and other mayhem. Such emissions are therefore strictly regulated, and rightly so.

The report and the lack of follow-up is disconcerting for a number of reasons. First, the ESB knew but did not tell the EPA. Second, the EPA got into action after complaints by locals. This does not help against nightly emissions or invisible ones. Third, there were two more incidents after the ESB was audited (and presumably warned) by the EPA. Fourth, there is no sign of remedial or punitive action.

(There is a side issue. Power plants should not do this. The boilers are either in much worse condition than their age suggests, or the engineers in charge are not doing their job as they should.)

Regulation is only as strong as its enforcement. For a plant the size of MoneyPoint, the EPA (and the public) should be able to monitor emissions in real time. We should not rely on voluntary disclosure or complaints. The EPA should have the right to intervene in the running of the plant, and shut it down if necessary. The owners and operators of the plant do not have the right incentives.

IPPC licenses were put in place to please Brussels, but they in fact protect our health and environment.

Luas needs joined-up thinking

A guest post by Donal Ó Brolcáin

The property-induced economic crisis has given us an opportunity to scrap Metro North and the proposed Dart Interconnector, and instead expand the Luas system in Dublin. Within the next few weeks, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) will open the Luas Green line extension to Cherrywood. This includes two fully equipped stations that will not be used. Recently, Iarnrod Eireann said it will not open a newly built station on the Kildare line. In both cases, the reason is that expected property development did not take place.

Metro North and the Interconnector are also predicated on development assumptions that no longer hold. Meanwhile, the government has dropped plans to link the two existing Luas lines for passenger services. This perpetuates the folly of the decision made in 1998 to build two separate Luas lines.

To meet the aims of government transport policy – to ensure the provision of a well-functioning, integrated public transport system that enhances competitiveness and contributes to social cohesion – I propose an integrated Luas, which would create an on-street loop around the central business district; access Dublin airport from all parts of the network, including a link to Dart; and fill the transport void in north Dublin with three Luas lines, all on the surface and cheaper per kilometre than Metro North.

Luas cannot be a network without integrating the Green and Red lines. This means a full interchange at the O’Connell Street-Abbey Street junction. This is no more radical a suggestion than the RPA-Iarnrod Eireann proposal to uproot St Stephen’s Green as part of their plans for two lines (Metro North, Dart Interconnector) underneath that part of Dublin.

Integrating the Green and Red lines needs two tracks on-street from Stephen’s Green to Broadstone, as RPA proposes. It would transfer to the unused line that joins the Western line (Maynooth, with the new Dunboyne line) at Broombridge.

Last Friday, An Bord Pleanála was due to hold a preliminary hearing on RPA’s application to build another Luas line, one that will not connect the existing lines for passenger services. The plan includes a bridge across the Liffey, joining Marlborough Street and Hawkins Street. This is silly, as it ignores the Samuel Beckett bridge, designed to take Luas vehicles. Why build yet another bridge that does not extend the Luas catchment area? Such a proposal goes against the notion of cost-effective improvement of public transport in the built-up parts of the capital.

The Docklands loop that I am proposing would use the Samuel Beckett bridge to integrate this new city quarter. Running on-street, it would connect the catchment areas of the Green line (Sandyford- Cherrywood) to the docklands, linking up the newly opened National Conference Centre, O2, Busaras, Connolly station and the Abbey theatre. It would connect the Red line (Tallaght-O2) to the south docklands, allowing easier access to the Grand Canal theatre, Shelbourne Park, the Aviva stadium, the Eye and Ear Hospital and National Concert Hall. It would require a new Dart interchange at Barrow Street on the southside, complementing Connolly Station on the northside.

The North Dublin loop would start from the joined-up Luas lines in O’Connell Street, run up Dorset Street, Drumcondra, Whitehall, Collins Avenue/DCU to Ballymun, onto the airport and back through Finglas to join the extended Green line at Broombridge. The airport can be linked to the Dart at Clongriffin, with a Luas line taking in Coolock, Beaumont Hospital and the North Fringe. That would put Dublin airport on a loop connecting it to the central business district from two directions. The airport can be also linked to the Dart at Clongriffin, with a Luas line taking in Coolock, Beaumont Hospital and the North Fringe.

Our governing classes love grand gestures, usually involving the feuding public-sector baronies of CIE companies, the RPA, National Roads Authority, local authorities, government departments and the newly created National Transport Authority. They refuse to learn from the mistakes made when railways were first built in Ireland.

Spin, hype and bluster cannot disguise the fact that quiet competence is missing. Dublin needs an integrated Luas network to show the “joined-up thinking” of which we have heard so much, and to get us out of the crisis caused by reliance on property development.

This article appeared in the Sunday Times of September 26.

Geothermal energy in Ireland

GT Energy has applied for permission for a deep geothermal power plant in South Dublin. This has attracted some media attention (here, here, here) and Paul Cunningham cast me in my standard naysayer/party-pooper role.

The media attention is overblown. The project is small. It is only an application for planning permission. The legal framework for exploiting these resources has yet to be designed. Subsidies for geothermal power are zero at present.

The cost of geothermal energy depends, to a large extent, on the depth of the hole that needs to be drilled to get to the heat below our feet. In Iceland, Mother Nature nicely brings the hot water to the surface. GT Energy plans to drill 4 kilometers deep in South Dublin.

Unfortunately, Ireland is at a geological disadvantage in this regard (although mercifully free of volcanoes by the same token). As shown on this map (peer-reviewed version here, but in B&W and behind a pay wall), you’d need to drill deeper in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe to get to the hot stuff.

Therefore, if GT Energy can get this to work at a profit in Ireland, they’d be best advised to apply the technology elsewhere and make buckets of money. I will not invest in their company, but others are free to try their luck.

Exporting Irish Education

The Government has just announced its plan to increase the number of non-Irish students in higher education by 50% between now and 2015, and to increase the “value” of the university sector by one third to 1.2 bln euro. The news bulletin and press release emphasize the targets, but are hazy on the implementation. After some digging, the underlying report can be found too. In this regard at least, education has something to teach to the other departments.

The report has a snappy title and great graphics, but is a bit hazy on the actual plan. It would of course be great if tens of thousands of non-EEA students would flock to Irish universities and pay a hefty fee that would cross-subsidize Irish students. But why would they? Ireland has the advantage that it teaches in English — but so do Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and, indeed, the Netherlands. Parents who wonder where to send little Yuan or precious Sujata may look at one of the university rankings and decide that there are more prestigious universities elsewhere. Ireland could compete on price, but that defies the purpose. Why would the Irish taxpayer subsidize the education of foreigners?

These considerations are not part of the report. In fact, little thought is given to the students or their parents. Two concrete measures are proposed. First, it will be easier to obtain a student visa. Second, there will be a major branding campaign. While branding is largely in your own hands if you sell butter, lager or dance, education is a harder sell. Substance should back up the image. Sending your kid abroad for 3-4 years is a major decision. The potential client is well-informed.

The report has an interesting factlet: Ireland has the highest proportion of students in the EU who study abroad. If our own students have so little confidence in the Irish universities, why would foreign students want to pay for the same?

Comptroller and Auditor General on the Universities

The Comptroller and Auditor General released a special report on the resource management and performance of Irish universities.

The report is 161 pages long. One part attracted a lot of attention: pay (here, here, here and here). The solution is rather simple: Introduce a special tax, rated at 100%, for unauthorized payments.

The report is not just about pay, though. The title has “performance” and Appendix C is supposedly all about that, but it is not. It is a qualitative assessment of the procedures in place and planned. All is fine if there is a committee to discuss it and a report going forward. Measuring academic performance is not the core task of the C&AG, but they could have hired a consultant. The report does lament that the universities are so bad at collecting data (about themselves) that any quantitative assessment of value for money would be impossible.

The report also describes resource allocation, which is by and large driven by the number of students. Quantity over quality.

The scale of the system is telling too. There are 27 institutes of higher education in the Republic. Seven universities have a total of 100,000 students. When I joined Hamburg U, we had 40,000 students (and one university president), but we merged with a neighbouring IT to gain economies of scale.