Stories
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published its latest compilation of scientific knowledge, showing the increasingly urgent need for changes to economic activity linked to global warming and extreme weather events by an ever-stronger body of evidence.
From energy to agriculture, the following articles chronicle the impact of climate change on Irish business since The Currency opened in the Autumn of 2019.
Innovating Ireland: Taking a tour of Tech Town – from poo-fuelled power to algae bricks
30th Oct, 2019. Sustainable building materials, carbon-neutral homes and quality housing represent one sector where Ireland could set the global pace for the implementation of new technologies. All we need is a designated experimental town.
From wind farms to recycling: Who is buying into (and financing) Ireland’s green wave?
28th Nov, 2019. In the coming days, the government will unveil the rules of the first renewable electricity support scheme in five years. Overseas capital is lining up to fund Irish environmental projects with billions of euro in energy, waste and forestry.
Energy security: when the urgent drives out the important, risks pile up
28th Nov, 2019. Brexit and climate change combined looks certain to create problems for Ireland’s shared energy supply between the north and the south. The solution? An integrated risk agency.
Planting the future: From “where to buy” to “where to plant”
11th Dec, 2019. ChannelSight co-founder John Beckett is on a mission to get tech companies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees. He tells Tom Lyons about the latest developments at Forestry Partners and at his main online marketing business.
Food in 2020: six trends to watch over this year – and decade
14th Jan, 2020. From trade wards to the “starbuckification” of food retail, Aidan Connolly foresees disruption and opportunities in the year(s) ahead – with Irish farmers and food processors showing disparate levels of readiness in the face of upcoming challenges.
3rd Feb, 2020. Stricter environmental auditing requirements are coming, and the next government should help business get ready to turn Ireland into a climate technology leader, says the Green Party’s leader – but he sees no need to reform planning laws to facilitate this. Read or listen.
“Amid escalating climate emergency, business-as-usual is a road to unmitigated ruin”
1st May, 2020. An enduring legacy of the coronavirus crisis may be the widespread new awareness of the extraordinarily fragile state of our world, how utterly we are at the mercy of nature, and how quickly everything we take for granted can unravel, writes John Gibbons.
Paul O’Donnell’s Greencoat Renewables: a yield machine, floating serenely above the market chaos
8th May, 2020. Together with Bertrand Gautier, Paul O’Donnell is Principal of Greencoat Renewables, the listed renewable energy company. They have been on an acquisition spree: twelve wind farm deals since 2017. Here O’Donnell describes Greencoat’s long term perspective, the short term impact of Covid-19, and how Ireland hits its 70 per cent renewable energy goal.
Lyons on agriculture, climate and the fiscal response to Covid-19: “Listen to the experts”
22nd May, 2020. The head of global agribusiness Alltech Mark Lyons finds himself hosting the first virtual edition of his company’s popular annual industry conference. He discusses how food production can navigate “the next normal”, and why his $3 billion firm remains private even as it enters new areas of digital technology and medicine.
“We always have more ideas than we have profits to reinvest”
27th May, 2020. Norman Crowley has set his global carbon efficiency business on a path to double revenue every year – although he acknowledges a nine-month setback from Covid-19. As the Greens are set to enter government here, does he expect a policy boost to his business? “No.” Read or listen.
9th Jun, 2020. Six months after stepping down as CEO of Providence Resources, Tony O’Reilly is back in the exploration game through dCarbonX. However, instead of looking for oil, he is now building a portfolio of subsurface assets through ‘decarbonization exploration’.
Climate, energy, transport, agriculture: How green is the programme for government?
16th Jun, 2020. The majority of policies agreed by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party to achieve the transition towards a greener economy were already known from previous commitments or set in EU legislation. Yet a new level of ambition is emerging, with concrete actions most clearly spelled out in transport – and a lot left to be teased out in agriculture.
Climate as a service: let’s bring off-balance-sheet green transition to the masses
8th Jul, 2020. Bundled solutions taking the risk and the upfront cost out of switching to low-energy lighting, electric vehicles or solar panels for businesses are now needed for households. Industry and the new government have been tiptoeing around this model – it is time they take the plunge.
8th Jul, 2020. Appointed boss of Bord Gáis Energy in her 30s, Catherine O’Kelly has led the €1bn business through Covid-19. As O’Kelly prepares to return to Centrica in the UK, she reflects on lessons learned, the current crisis and the green agenda.
7th Aug, 2020. For the first time in five years, new renewable electricity generation sites have been selected to receive government support, unlocking a new wave of pent-up investment, construction and corporate deals in the sector.
Freeflow: How social distancing helped bring about a cycling revolution in South Dublin
8th Aug, 2020. The south coast of Dublin has been radically reimagined as a haven for cyclists. The Currency‘s Tom Lyons takes to his bike and meets the man driving the project.
10th Aug, 2020. The Programme for Government has promised €9.5 billion to help households and farmers become greener, funded by a four-fold increase in carbon tax over the coming decade. Data compiled by tax officials shows this is unlikely to happen.
Betting the farm: Devenish ploughs resources into deep agritech restructure
18th Aug, 2020. The Belfast-based livestock nutrition company is investing massively in its new global research and development centre in Co Meath, where it hopes to produce carbon-neutral beef and dairy by 2025. But the lenders behind a €118m refinancing package are keeping a close watch as its existing business faces the challenges of Brexit and Covid-19. To provide guarantees, Owen Brennan’s group has been reorganising.
25th Aug, 2020. Companies interested in drilling Ireland’s offshore have abandoned nearly half of their concessions in less than one year. While the move matches policy to shift away from fossil fuels, it leaves senior civil servants worried as the country’s dependence on imported gas increases.
21st Sep, 2020. The Irish Petroleum Industry Association is dead, long live Fuels for Ireland. The industry body representing oil importers and distributors and Ireland’s only refinery has acknowledged that its members won’t sustain their businesses into the future by selling fossil fuels. Read or listen.
Climate bill aims to avoid a repeat of the Nphet-Government clash
8th Oct, 2020. Much delayed legislation introduced by the Government on Wednesday will apply to Ireland the carbon budgeting world standard developed by the UK since 2008. It may not ban petrol cars as promised, but its ambition is much bigger: regulate the collaboration between scientific experts and politicians in solving their greatest challenge for the next 30 years.
14th Oct, 2020. As budgetary caution evaporates under the Covid-19 shock, energy efficiency, buses and trains are getting funded like never before. Can these new environmental priorities survive into the future?
1st Dec, 2020. McDonald’s is the latest food business to announce a plant-based alternative for next year. We don’t know yet if shifts in consumer demand away from meat and dairy are a temporary fad or deep-seated trends. Either way, a public stake in this emerging industry would help manage what the future holds for Irish farmers.
A €150m lightbulb moment: Shining light on Amarenco’s solar business
10th Dec, 2020. From a consultancy helping investors buy into renewable assets, the Cork-based company’s latest fundraise signals the execution of its plan to become a multinational power producer. We investigate Amarenco’s strategy, its shareholders and its 100+ subsidiaries.
Amazon’s data centres will need more power than a million Irish homes – but where from?
14th Dec, 2020. Exclusive figures compiled by Greenpeace estimate the digital giant’s power demand for its expanding data hosting business in Ireland. The numbers add up, and they show AWS has a long way to go to its full renewable commitment
“This is going to be the Tesla or the Amazon of the electricity transmission business”
7th Jan, 2021. Eddie O’Connor sold Airtricity for €1.8 billion and could soon turn Mainstream Power into another renewables unicorn. His new business, SuperNode, is no longer about energy production – instead, it is a bet on its trans-European transportation.
“I can wake up every day and make a difference” – what Louise Phelan did next
23rd Mar, 2021. Louise Phelan could have become a fixture of the Irish boardroom after her stellar career at PayPal. Instead, she became chief executive of the Phelan Energy Group. Under her stewardship, the company is entering new markets, hiring more staff, and crucially for Phelan, making a difference.
2nd Apr, 2021. Exergyn is developing a potentially game-changing technology. However, with a potential sale to a US corporation being discussed, there is tension between some investors in the company and some voting shareholders who control it.
26th Apr, 2021. ECI Energy was spun out of an established family business on the northside of Dublin. Acutrace is a six-year-old prop-tech company tackling inefficiencies in commercial buildings. The two firms have just tied the knot.
Irish agri-food is facing up to its climate responsibility – it’s just 10 years late
7th May, 2021. From science to soul-searching, the industry is showing signs of a deep shift in addressing its environmental impact. The bad news is that the rest of the world has moved on, and rules are long set for the rest of this decade. The good news is that work taking place now will be useful to tackle the real challenge coming after 2030.
Goodbody is proposing Reits for renewables. A “crazy idea” or a worthwhile policy?
12th May, 2021. An informal suggestion from a leading stockbroker to a minister made it into a formal disclosure: If tax-transparent investment structures were so successful to channel capital into property, why not roll them out to green energy? There is more to it than meets the eye.
We need a new institution to solve climate change via technology, green innovation, and SME dynamism
13th May, 2021. Multiple assessments of the Irish economy agree that the long-term issues facing us are intergenerational inequality, firms dealing with technological change, and climate change. Here is how we can tackle them, writes Stephen Kinsella.
Concrete plans: Backed by Bill Gates, valued at €200m, Ecocem now wants to deliver on its potential
19th May, 2021. When he started his low-carbon cement manufacturing company 20 years ago, Donal O’Riain freely admits that the timing was wrong. Now high-profile investors are injecting millions into Ecocem’s promise to fix one of the world’s worst-polluting industries. Read or listen.
From project to planning and policy: What the battle for Belview means for industrial development
24th May, 2021. An Taisce’s challenge to Glanbia’s cheese factory raises many questions: Is litigation against individual projects the new policy battleground? How much of a facility’s supply chain should be scrutinised in the planning process? Experts offer varied answers.
31st May, 2021. I have chaired Mainstream Renewable Power and I have known Eddie O’Connor for decades. His comments on Africa were inaccurate and offensive. But it is important to try to understand the nature of the man himself, writes Fintan Drury.
Dublin firm wins million-dollar funding to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere
18th Jun, 2021. Carbon Collect is the brainchild of Irish entrepreneurs and former oil executives. It has now secured US government backing to tackle greenhouse gases with its “mechanical trees”.
Europe took nearly three years to agree a partial CAP deal. Now this is Ireland’s problem
29th Jun, 2021. The Common Agricultural Policy accounts for one in every five euro of Irish farmgate revenue and the EU has finally struck an agreement aiming to make it “simpler, fairer and greener”. A new battle begins now to decide how Ireland’s agri-food industry will deliver this.
Plan for Irish green energy storage company to float in Oslo
1st Jul, 2021. Sometimes wind turbines and solar panels produce excess electricity – sometimes not enough. An Irish company is going to the market to store it underground in gas form and release it when peak demand hits.
Solar deals are now making nine-figure sums, and the next round of bidding is about to open
27th Jul, 2021. The long-awaited selection of the first grid-scale solar energy projects ever eligible to state support in Ireland just one year ago opened the capital floodgates. Norwegian, British and French investors have been piling in.
Hope amid the inaction: Threats and opportunities in the climate whirlwind
5th Aug, 2021. Despite abundant knowledge on what needs to be done to stop global warming, it is not happening for the simple reason that nobody wants to do it. Humanity’s next best chance lies in technology, writes Stephen Kinsella.
10th Aug, 2021. The urgent need to stop carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels is nothing new, but farmers and food processors were hoping the different gas released by livestock could be stabilised. The IPCC’s new report shows it must go down too.
Wartime economics: When it comes to climate change, the government should not worry about the money
12th Aug, 2021. Fiscally speaking, we live in times closer to wars. Money is the sinew connecting all emergencies to their solutions. Paradoxically, Covid-19 has prepared us for what we need to do with climate change.
16th Aug, 20201. In a special podcast, Stephen Kinsella, Sinéad O’Sullivan, John Reynolds and Thomas Hubert watch the dust settle on the two climate change reports published last week and discuss ways of meeting the challenge ahead for politics, society and business.
