\ Elgin Energy
The Irish Solar Energy Association (ISEA), the representative body for the solar industry in Ireland, was founded in 2013 to work to influence Government agencies on solar energy using their existing knowledge and experience from developers.
This week, I sat down with Conall Bolger, CEO of the ISEA, to see what role Irish farmers can play in solar.
JK: Why solar? I see you are backing a new industry report?
CB: Despite our well-earned reputation for rain, Ireland has a tremendous capability to generate solar energy.
We estimate that if the right policies were enacted, we could produce enough power from solar PV to power 1.9m homes by 2030. There is an enormous pipeline of projects – easily 2,000MW of solar PV project capacity could be accommodated on the Irish system by 2025.
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The New Zealand government is to fund a space mission to examine its potential to monitor methane emissions from agriculture around the world.
The New Zealand government is going to monitor methane emissions from agriculture using a satellite in space.
MethaneSAT is a satellite intended to detect global methane emissions to an extremely accurate level.
The satellite can focus on a large area or can look at specific targets.
The project is New Zealand’s first government-funded space mission.
New Zealand’s ministry of business, innovation and employment is participating in the mission to help to combat climate change.
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Ollie Whyte sourced a bit of help in his oilseed rape crop. Seventeen bee hives surround the oilseed rape on this farm, with 30,000 bees in each one. The photo is courtesy of Mick Kelly, chair of the Fingal Bee Keepers Association.
Throughout the month,
Irish Farmers Journal readers have been sending in their pictures for Arable April.
The initiative, run in conjunction with the Irish Grain Growers Group and supported by Seedtech, has a theme of sustainability.
Through competition entries, posts and pictures on social media, tillage farmers, farming families and industry really showed the positives of the sector.
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There may be no Government support for anaerobic digestion in Ireland but there’s no shortage of research projects underway
Teagasc has launched a new three-year project aiming to look at farm-supplied feedstock for anaerobic digestion (AD) plants.
The project, called FLEET, will identify farm-scale, landscape-level and national-level economic and environmental implications of farm supplied alternative feedstock for AD at a regional level.
The first online meeting of the FLEET technical working group was held this week.
Teagasc claims that this research will be the first of its kind in Ireland to evaluate the potential for AD to address economic and environmental outcomes at an individual farm level using Teagasc National Farm Survey data.