Biomass imports

_Brian

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0713/1061843-bord-na-mona-jobs/

Imagine the carbon footprint of 10weeks shipping.

Would there not be a product locally that would do this?

Odelay

_Brian wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0713/1061843-bord-na-mona-jobs/

Imagine the carbon footprint of 10weeks shipping.

Would there not be a product locally that would do this?

They need 3000 tons per day. Massive volumes. They are trying to buy every bit of fibre in the country but not enough.

roosterman71

_Brian wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0713/1061843-bord-na-mona-jobs/

Imagine the carbon footprint of 10weeks shipping.

Would there not be a product locally that would do this?

Yer looking at it all wrong. They are saving carbon because wood is renewable as opposed to peat. Sure they are single handily saving the country :rolleyes:

Nekarsulm

Hard to understand how it makes sense to ship it from Australia.
There is land here in Cavan planted in willow thats been basically abandoned because its not economically viable to transport it to a power station 40 miles away.....

patsy_mccabe

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Hard to understand how it makes sense to ship it from Australia.
There is land here in Cavan planted in willow thats been basically abandoned because its not economically viable to transport it to a power station 40 miles away.....

Exactly. That's how crazy the whole climate change debate has become. It's a bit like asking all those young protestors to give up their laptop and mobile phone to save the planet. Fat chance of that.

_Brian

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Hard to understand how it makes sense to ship it from Australia.
There is land here in Cavan planted in willow thats been basically abandoned because its not economically viable to transport it to a power station 40 miles away.....

I’ve said before.
This is happening because emissions from transport were omitted from the pros accord. If there were a carbon tax in shipping of goods then things would change very quickly.

Nekarsulm

_Brian wrote: »

I’ve said before.
This is happening because emissions from transport were omitted from the pros accord. If there were a carbon tax in shipping of goods then things would change very quickly.

Only read somewhere on Friday, that aircraft fuel is NOT included in emmissions calculations.
If you included Ryan Air and Aer Lingus fuel burn, I'd say you'd nearly have to euthanize half the population .....

148multi

Odelay wrote: »

They need 3000 tons per day. Massive volumes. They are trying to buy every bit of fibre in the country but not enough.

There's one small company that's 7 miles from the lough ree Station, its sending 3200 tonnes of wood chip to Derry each week.

foxy farmer

Is there any miscanthus growing now? I draw silage bales off 3 fields that were growing miscanthus for last 10 yrs. No one here can remember it ever being cut once.

Odelay

Still growing in a few places. Nuns near here have it. Usually harvested in spring. Apparently makes great animal bedding.

whelan2

Odelay wrote: »

Still growing in a few places. Nuns near here have it. Usually harvested in spring. Apparently makes great animal bedding.

Speaking of bedding the furniture place across the road have about 20 half tonne bags of sawdust. They kept asking me to take them. I don't want them. They have been stored outside and I'd assume there's lumps and everything in it. Wouldn't be any use for bedding cubicles.

Reggie.

foxy farmer wrote: »

Is there any miscanthus growing now? I draw silage bales off 3 fields that were growing miscanthus for last 10 yrs. No one here can remember it ever being cut once.

Still grown in mullingar. Goes for animal bedding

ganmo

foxy farmer wrote: »

Is there any miscanthus growing now? I draw silage bales off 3 fields that were growing miscanthus for last 10 yrs. No one here can remember it ever being cut once.

I read something last year about quinns of baltinglass buying it

Albert Johnson

whelan2 wrote: »

Odelay wrote: »

Still growing in a few places. Nuns near here have it. Usually harvested in spring. Apparently makes great animal bedding.

Speaking of bedding the furniture place across the road have about 20 half tonne bags of sawdust. They kept asking me to take them. I don't want them. They have been stored outside and I'd assume there's lumps and everything in it. Wouldn't be any use for bedding cubicles.

I've never used sawdust for bedding and assume you'd want a fair quantity of it to make a decent dry lie?. My biggest concern with what you've been offered would be nails, screws and other nasty surprises, I doubt that any of that material is passed through a metal detector or other screening process.

Water John

And we import biomass from Australia to burn in our power plants. Miscanthus,willow growers, rapeseed oil and ethanol were treated disgracefully by Govn'ts. Now with Climate Action Plan we'll have a new, love in.

Odelay

Reggie. wrote: »

Still grown in mullingar. Goes for animal bedding

Gigginstown? They’ll know the value of what goes in and out of a stable.

Reggie.

Odelay wrote: »

Gigginstown? They’ll know the value of what goes in and out of a stable.

No a separate man. The gigginstown stud is closing up shop now

ganmo

Reggie. wrote: »

No a separate man. The gigginstown stud is closing up shop now

Is he keeping the cattle?

Say my name

Water John wrote: »

And we import biomass from Australia to burn in our power plants. Miscanthus,willow growers, rapeseed oil and ethanol were treated disgracefully by Govn'ts. Now with Climate Action Plan we'll have a new, love in.

Sure we couldn't possibly trust farmers to grow biomass for a semi state company in this country? Those pesky farmers would have us over a barrel in jig time.

No it's better to import it in a large quantity at an unknown cost to the public and keep it quiet like. Sure we'll have jobs for the port workers, lorry drivers and power station operators and have our green image assured.

Wait a few years and we won't be dealing with the farmers anyways it'll be intermediaries who'll put the screw down on them when those cattle are gone and we'll deal with the intermediaries.

Reggie.

ganmo wrote: »

Is he keeping the cattle?

Yeah only the cattle and tillage

148multi

foxy farmer wrote: »

Is there any miscanthus growing now? I draw silage bales off 3 fields that were growing miscanthus for last 10 yrs. No one here can remember it ever being cut once.

All of it has been replaced with grass or forestry here, as I understand it has a high content of chlorine, apparently the old lough ree power station could have burnt it as the heat burned off all gases, but the new station doesn't burn as hot, as there are particle filters in the chimney. The chlorine would damage the system, I wonder how it would affect grassland when spread as FYM.

blue5000

Mod note, I pulled these from chit chat as I thought the topic deserved it's own thread.

Miscanthus is supposed to sequester carbon in soil too. The roots grow down fairly deep in the soil.

MrMusician18

If farmers could get €35/bale for biomass grass unwrapped and keep the SFP, would many bother with sucklers?

Energy crops may prove to be the best way out of a saturated beef market.

_Brian

I think it really shows that allot of people banging a drum against farming because of emissions and climate were actually really just extremist vegan groups taking advantage of a few soundbite reports against Ag.

True environmentalists would be horrified at wood coming from Australia while beef/chicken is shipped from Brazil. The environmental impact of this mass transit of goods must be massive. Supporting Irish farmers to produce these products is on a much sounder environmental footing.

This mass transit of goods we already have ye ability to produce should be bringing allot of pressure from true environmentalists on the government to support Irish farming. We need a common sense approach, taking into account emissions from transport, otherwise the whole thing is a total joke.

MrMusician18

_Brian wrote: »

I think it really shows that allot of people banging a drum against farming because of emissions and climate were actually really just extremist vegan groups taking advantage of a few soundbite reports against Ag.

True environmentalists would be horrified at wood coming from Australia while beef/chicken is shipped from Brazil. The environmental impact of this mass transit of goods must be massive. Supporting Irish farmers to produce these products is on a much sounder environmental footing.

This mass transit of goods we already have ye ability to produce should be bringing allot of pressure from true environmentalists on the government to support Irish farming. We need a common sense approach, taking into account emissions from transport, otherwise the whole thing is a total joke.

The emission cost of the slow boat from Australia is relatively small though. I'm guessing the most energy intensive party of the trip is the truck transfer from foynes

my3cents

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The emission cost of the slow boat from Australia is relatively small though. I'm guessing the most energy intensive party of the trip is the truck transfer from foynes

But iirc the fuel used by many slow boats is the lowest cheapest grade and as a consequence the most polluting.

blue5000

_Brian wrote: »

I think it really shows that allot of people banging a drum against farming because of emissions and climate were actually really just extremist vegan groups taking advantage of a few soundbite reports against Ag.

True environmentalists would be horrified at wood coming from Australia while beef/chicken is shipped from Brazil. The environmental impact of this mass transit of goods must be massive. Supporting Irish farmers to produce these products is on a much sounder environmental footing.

This mass transit of goods we already have ye ability to produce should be bringing allot of pressure from true environmentalists on the government to support Irish farming. We need a common sense approach, taking into account emissions from transport, otherwise the whole thing is a total joke.

The sad thing is it's probably cheaper and more energy efficient to bring a ton of wood from Australia by ship than it would be for a farmer to transport a load of bales by tractor and trailer 40km to a power plant. AFAIK ships can transport 1 ton/mile for as little as 1c.

Obviously the closer you get to the power plant the more efficient it is, because of no backload. But 40km seems to be the cutoff point for transporting biomass by road.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cushman/books/Numbers/Chap5-Transportation.pdf

Odelay

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The emission cost of the slow boat from Australia is relatively small though. I'm guessing the most energy intensive party of the trip is the truck transfer from foynes

A cruise ship emits the same emissions as 1 million cars per day. If a cargo ship was half that it’s still a lot. Plus at a travel time of 30-40 days they’d need to have 3 or 4 of them traveling constantly to keep the boiler fed. That’s a lot of emissions to have forgotten about.

MrMusician18

my3cents wrote: »

But iirc the fuel used by many slow boats is the lowest cheapest grade and as a consequence the most polluting.

Most polluting in terms of sulphur (although I think that is being phased out), but not CO2.

While it might burn what seems to be a phenomenal amount of fuel per journey even if it's very efficient, when the fuel burn in terms of payload delivered is considered, it's very small.

I agree it would be much better for it to be produced domestically and I think that it could prove to be the desperately required, financially viable, out for a lot of unsustainable suckler farmers.

At €80/t (based on a 5c/kwh wholesale price of electricity and accounting for power plant being 35% efficient) and 15t dm/ha, 50acre farm could return €24k per year before expenses. If a farmer could keep his SFP on top of this, energy crops would be very competitive vs suckler farming

blue5000

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Most polluting in terms of sulphur (although I think that is being phased out), but not CO2.

While it might burn what seems to be a phenomenal amount of fuel per journey even if it's very efficient, when the fuel burn in terms of payload delivered is considered, it's very small.

I agree it would be much better for it to be produced domestically and I think that it could prove to be the desperately required, financially viable, out for a lot of unsustainable suckler farmers.

At €80/t (based on a 5c/kwh wholesale price of electricity and accounting for power plant being 35% efficient) and 15t dm/ha, 50acre farm could return €24k per year before expenses. If a farmer could keep his SFP on top of this, energy crops would be very competitive vs suckler farming

Last time I looked into it forestry is paying better, is tax free, 100% grant aided for planting, and the thinnings can go for biomass.

Only con is that it is permanent. Farmers that planted miscanthus even had to pay vat on establishment costs.

yosemitesam1

At present the prices being paid for biomass timber will just barely cover harvesting and haulage AFAIK. Europe has loads of timber that can't be brought here due to diseases issues.
The majority of future forestry plantings here are likely to be burned at break even costs at best.

MrMusician18

blue5000 wrote: »

Last time I looked into it forestry is paying better, is tax free, 100% grant aided for planting, and the thinnings can go for biomass.

Only con is that it is permanent. Farmers that planted miscanthus even had to pay vat on establishment costs.

I think the issue at the moment is due to scale and a lack of market. With these two plants running they will have an insatiable demand for biomass which should hopefully bring scale to the industry.

With scale comes efficiency, so rather than shipping the whole way by road to the station, the farmer might be able to transfer to a Depot where it is taken by train to the power plant. BnM once ran one of the largest industrial railways in Europe so things like that can be done. Biomass looks like it will also be relatively labour intensive keeping some jobs in the rural economy.

Even though they are importing now, farmers should be welcoming the move to biomass. At worst it will have no impact on them, but at best it will provide another market for what they produce. It might also divert some supply out of beef, giving price support for those that stay in.

BorneTobyWilde

Cardboard is wood, why not stop shipping bales of cardboard to the Shy Knees and instead use it here to generate electricity. Every ounce of cardboard is shipped out of Ireland, it's a great biomass. There is also 1000's of tons of waste wood in Ireland, all should be used too, builder off cuts.

Say my name

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Cardboard is wood, why not stop shipping bales of cardboard to the Shy Knees and instead use it here to generate electricity. Every ounce of cardboard is shipped out of Ireland, it's a great biomass. There is also 1000's of tons of waste wood in Ireland, all should be used too, builder off cuts.

I heard a story about an entrepreneurial person who had a brainwave about using waste wood from building sites.
They turned it into wood pellets for heating systems.
What they hadn't figured on was that a lot of timber used in construction now is treated with fire retardants. People bought the wood pellet burners and wood pellets but blamed the burners for not working. :pac:

BorneTobyWilde

Say my name wrote: »

I heard a story about an entrepreneurial person who had a brainwave about using waste wood from building sites.
They turned it into wood pellets for heating systems.
What they hadn't figured on was that a lot of timber used in construction now is treated with fire retardants. People bought the wood pellet burners and wood pellets but blamed the burners for not working. :pac:

Nothing would stop wood from burning in those Biomass Stations. They'd burn ice.

148multi

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

At present the prices being paid for biomass timber will just barely cover harvesting and haulage AFAIK. Europe has loads of timber that can't be brought here due to diseases issues.
The majority of future forestry plantings here are likely to be burned at break even costs at best.

The plan for future harvested timber is to be used in construction and furniture, store the carbon for every more, no burning.

emaherx

_Brian wrote: »

I think it really shows that allot of people banging a drum against farming because of emissions and climate were actually really just extremist vegan groups taking advantage of a few soundbite reports against Ag.

True environmentalists would be horrified at wood coming from Australia while beef/chicken is shipped from Brazil. The environmental impact of this mass transit of goods must be massive. Supporting Irish farmers to produce these products is on a much sounder environmental footing.

This mass transit of goods we already have ye ability to produce should be bringing allot of pressure from true environmentalists on the government to support Irish farming. We need a common sense approach, taking into account emissions from transport, otherwise the whole thing is a total joke.

https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/climate-change-activists-back-farmers-at-major-rural-protest/

Apparently they are not all farm hating vegans!

Upstream

blue5000 wrote: »

The sad thing is it's probably cheaper and more energy efficient to bring a ton of wood from Australia by ship than it would be for a farmer to transport a load of bales by tractor and trailer 40km to a power plant. AFAIK ships can transport 1 ton/mile for as little as 1c.

Obviously the closer you get to the power plant the more efficient it is, because of no backload. But 40km seems to be the cutoff point for transporting biomass by road.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cushman/books/Numbers/Chap5-Transportation.pdf

Shipping is relatively cheap per mile, but it's still roughly 10,000 miles by boat to Australia.
So if ships can transport 1 ton/mile for 1c that still works out at about €100 a ton from there. You'd think that would take away the economic advantage of shipping a commodity from so far away.

marzic

Nekarsulm wrote: »

_Brian wrote: »

I’ve said before.
This is happening because emissions from transport were omitted from the pros accord. If there were a carbon tax in shipping of goods then things would change very quickly.

Only read somewhere on Friday, that aircraft fuel is NOT included in emmissions calculations.
If you included Ryan Air and Aer Lingus fuel burn, I'd say you'd nearly have to euthanize half the population .....

Plus there's no duty on jet fuel, so no benefit to the exchecquer

MrMusician18

Upstream wrote: »

Shipping is relatively cheap per mile, but it's still roughly 10,000 miles by boat to Australia.
So if ships can transport 1 ton/mile for 1c that still works out at about €100 a ton from there. You'd think that would take away the economic advantage of shipping a commodity from so far away.

The obvious reason they're importing it is because there isn't feedstock available here in the quantities required to get started.

However if farmers here only need to be producing miscanthus at €130 or 140/t to be competitive it won't be long until vast swathes of the country are under it.

I can't understand the hostility to it tbh. It looks like the easiest cash crop going with a soon too be massive domestic market. Rather than knocking it, perhaps farmers should be taking tentative steps into organising themselves into growing groups so they would have better leverage to negotiate on price

blue5000

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The obvious reason they're importing it is because there isn't feedstock available here in the quantities required to get started.

How much is needed? An area the size of Kerry planted with miscanthus wouldn't be big enough to supply 10% of Moneypoint's requirements.




However if farmers here only need to be producing miscanthus at €130 or 140/t to be competitive it won't be long until vast swathes of the country are under it.

There's a couple of problems with it; chlorine and it's expensive to plant.

I can't understand the hostility to it tbh. It looks like the easiest cash crop going with a soon to be massive domestic market. Rather than knocking it, perhaps farmers should be taking tentative steps into organising themselves into growing groups so they would have better leverage to negotiate on price


People who planted it 10-15 years ago couldn't give it away, never mind sell it. It will need a substantial govt. led programme to get it off the ground this time, I'm talking 100% grant aid for establishment and a guaranteed market. It needs good land to produce a decent crop, unlike sitka which grows well on marginal land.

MrMusician18

blue5000 wrote: »

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The obvious reason they're importing it is because there isn't feedstock available here in the quantities required to get started.

How much is needed? An area the size of Kerry planted with miscanthus wouldn't be big enough to supply 10% of Moneypoint's requirements.





However if farmers here only need to be producing miscanthus at €130 or 140/t to be competitive it won't be long until vast swathes of the country are under it.

There's a couple of problems with it; chlorine and it's expensive to plant.

I can't understand the hostility to it tbh. It looks like the easiest cash crop going with a soon to be massive domestic market. Rather than knocking it, perhaps farmers should be taking tentative steps into organising themselves into growing groups so they would have better leverage to negotiate on price


People who planted it 10-15 years ago couldn't give it away, never mind sell it. It will need a substantial govt. led programme to get it off the ground this time, I'm talking 100% grant aid for establishment and a guaranteed market. It needs good land to produce a decent crop, unlike sitka which grows well on marginal land.

They're not planning on replacing Moneypoint with a biomass plant, only Lanesboro and Edenderry. The demand is 3000t/day so these two plants would require an area 2/3 the size of Longford to meet demand. A huge area but to be honest, the majority of Longford/Roscommon/Leitrim is either under forestry or unsustainable small suckler farms.

Fair enough about farmers being burned by biomass before, but this project is could to create an insatiable demand for it here. Once the market is established and paying a good price I would see little reason why further incentives are needed beyond the SFP. The importation is the first part of establishing the market and farmers should see that there is a clear first mover advantage to be won should these stations get planning.

yosemitesam1

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The obvious reason they're importing it is because there isn't feedstock available here in the quantities required to get started.

However if farmers here only need to be producing miscanthus at €130 or 140/t to be competitive it won't be long until vast swathes of the country are under it.

I can't understand the hostility to it tbh. It looks like the easiest cash crop going with a soon too be massive domestic market. Rather than knocking it, perhaps farmers should be taking tentative steps into organising themselves into growing groups so they would have better leverage to negotiate on price

Where is that ,€130/t coming from? It would be costing under €30/t for transport from aus, they can probably get it here for a similar enough price for local timber which is just breaking even for the grower between harvest+transport.

MrMusician18

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Where is that ,€130/t coming from? It would be costing under €30/t for transport from aus, they can probably get it here for a similar enough price for local timber which is just breaking even for the grower between harvest+transport.

I had been referencing another poster above who said that the cost of slow boat would be about 1c/t/mi. From a little research bulk shipping is about half that. So let's do a little calculation: Given that after it is delivered to Ireland, it has to be trucked from Foynes we can ignore the land transport costs of the farmer as we will consider both similar (even though Foynes is well outside the 40km radius from Lanesboro or Edenderry)

According to the farmers experienced with miscanthusin Ireland on agriland, it takes 100l diesel to harvest an acre of miscanthus, which would have a median yield of 5t dm/acre. The price assuming 70c/l for agri diesel would give a cost to harvest of €350/acre Or €70/t. BnM would have to be buying bulk biomass from Australia at less than €20/t to be more competitive than that domestically produced.

Irish farmers can definitely compete here and this is a real opportunity for many unviable farms to become viable again if this project goes ahead.

ganmo

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Irish farmers can definitely compete here and this is a real opportunity for many unviable farms to become viable again if this project goes ahead.

Were they given the opportunity to to compete?

Good loser

MrMusician18 wrote: »

I had been referencing another poster above who said that the cost of slow boat would be about 1c/t/mi. From a little research bulk shipping is about half that. So let's do a little calculation: Given that after it is delivered to Ireland, it has to be trucked from Foynes we can ignore the land transport costs of the farmer as we will consider both similar (even though Foynes is well outside the 40km radius from Lanesboro or Edenderry)

According to the farmers experienced with miscanthusin Ireland on agriland, it takes 100l diesel to harvest an acre of miscanthus, which would have a median yield of 5t dm/acre. The price assuming 70c/l for agri diesel would give a cost to harvest of €350/acre Or €70/t. BnM would have to be buying bulk biomass from Australia at less than €20/t to be more competitive than that domestically produced.

Irish farmers can definitely compete here and this is a real opportunity for many unviable farms to become viable again if this project goes ahead.

You don't really know much about miscanthus do you?

Just today I was told about a farm that had 120+ acres of top quality land in miscanthus for 10/12 years, all of it now pulled out - it took a serious amount of harrowing to get it out and rogue plants are continuing to grow in the grassland that replaced it.

The break even price for selling it was €64 per tonne and the best price that could be achieved was €46 per tonne.

Nobody wanted it. Some went to Edenderry until the boiler(s) was replaced; the new boilers would not be covered for insurance if ANY miscanthus was used as a fuel source. The chlorine or something (apparently) destroyed the lining of the combustion chamber.

The farm owner above had 3/4 years of it stockpiled in the end; some of it was
used for animal bedding but it was an inferior product worth about €8 per bale; it was hard on the baler too, spiky and brittle.

Only a fool would plant miscanthus.

Reggie.

Good loser wrote: »

You don't really know much about miscanthus do you?

Just today I was told about a farm that had 120+ acres of top quality land in miscanthus for 10/12 years, all of it now pulled out - it took a serious amount of harrowing to get it out and rogue plants are continuing to grow in the grassland that replaced it.

The break even price for selling it was €64 per tonne and the best price that could be achieved was €46 per tonne.

Nobody wanted it. Some went to Edenderry until the boiler(s) was replaced; the new boilers would not be covered for insurance if ANY miscanthus was used as a fuel source. The chlorine or something (apparently) destroyed the lining of the combustion chamber.

The farm owner above had 3/4 years of it stockpiled in the end; some of it was
used for animal bedding but it was an inferior product worth about €8 per bale; it was hard on the baler too, spiky and brittle.

Only a fool would plant miscanthus.

And every other country is investing in it and the government here are more worried about electric cars

yosemitesam1

MrMusician18 wrote: »

I had been referencing another poster above who said that the cost of slow boat would be about 1c/t/mi. From a little research bulk shipping is about half that. So let's do a little calculation: Given that after it is delivered to Ireland, it has to be trucked from Foynes we can ignore the land transport costs of the farmer as we will consider both similar (even though Foynes is well outside the 40km radius from Lanesboro or Edenderry)

According to the farmers experienced with miscanthusin Ireland on agriland, it takes 100l diesel to harvest an acre of miscanthus, which would have a median yield of 5t dm/acre. The price assuming 70c/l for agri diesel would give a cost to harvest of €350/acre Or €70/t. BnM would have to be buying bulk biomass from Australia at less than €20/t to be more competitive than that domestically produced.

Irish farmers can definitely compete here and this is a real opportunity for many unviable farms to become viable again if this project goes ahead.

By the time you allow for planting, land costs etc, the potential profit doesn't be long disappearing. Can't see why so much effort has been put into miscanthus, it has so many barriers to actually ever becoming a viable option.
Encouraging low input straw production would have more potential and would produce grain as a byproduct.

Markcheese

Reggie. wrote: »

And every other country is investing in it and the government here are more worried about electric cars

Like anything else, gotta plant the right thing in the right place,( and at the right time market wise) Miscantus ain't it.
Willow sounds great, but establishment costs are agaín high, ideally you'd harvest in winter.. But ground conditions mightn't suit,
Socially you'd want it in western and North Western areas, but large tillage fields are rarer there...

MrMusician18

Good loser wrote: »

You don't really know much about miscanthus do you?

Just today I was told about a farm that had 120+ acres of top quality land in miscanthus for 10/12 years, all of it now pulled out - it took a serious amount of harrowing to get it out and rogue plants are continuing to grow in the grassland that replaced it.

The break even price for selling it was €64 per tonne and the best price that could be achieved was €46 per tonne.

Nobody wanted it. Some went to Edenderry until the boiler(s) was replaced; the new boilers would not be covered for insurance if ANY miscanthus was used as a fuel source. The chlorine or something (apparently) destroyed the lining of the combustion chamber.

The farm owner above had 3/4 years of it stockpiled in the end; some of it was
used for animal bedding but it was an inferior product worth about €8 per bale; it was hard on the baler too, spiky and brittle.

Only a fool would plant miscanthus.

I'd agree, but only when there is no market. Lanesboro and West Offaly are being converted to burn this stuff so there should be no issue with the boilers, and it will be a licensing requirement to use biomass as a feedstock so there will be a market. Since it won't be competing with cheaper peat (hence the low price of €46/t) the price of peat won't be the price floor, but the cost of imported biomass. I've already illustrated that domestic producers have €50/t headroom over import due to shipping costs to stay competitive.

I'm not saying that farmers must grow it, but there clearly is an opportunity here as a new source of domestic demand could potentially come on stream. It definitely offers an opportunity for diversification and farmers should be looking for a way in rather that knocking the project.


And no one is forcing farmers to take this opportunity, they are free to continue losing money raising sucklers is they wish.

Water John

Miscanthus is a rhizome so very difficult to get rid of it. Any length left in the soil will regrow.
The hard lesson for all those who were the early adoptors of all the bio technologies is, unless a secure long term market is guaranteed to be available, don't go there.
If the Govn't want it, let them back it. Lets see if there real about their Cl Ac Pl.
Some sectors are already unhappy at having been largely written out of being a contribution to the mix of solutions.