Project Details

Title: SHIELD (Safeguarding Ireland’s Energy Transition against Critical Materials Supply Disruption and Geopolitical Dynamics)

Start Date: 01/02/2025

End Date: 31/01/2027 

Funding Body: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Principal Investigator: Dr Vahid Aryanpur

Co- Principal Investigators: Prof. Hannah Daly and Dr Paul Deane

Introduction

The research project aims to analyse Ireland’s energy system transition in light of international energy security challenges. As Ireland moves towards a carbon-neutral future, global geopolitical dynamics and uncertainties in the supply of critical materials threaten energy system resilience. This transition relies on advanced technologies and renewable fuels. Therefore, unlike traditional fossil-based energy system, advanced technologies and alternative fuels will play a key role in future Ireland’s energy systems. Consequently, Ireland must address new energy security risks, such as the limited availability or high cost of clean technologies and zero-emission fuels, as well as traditional cross-border risks in power and gas interconnectors. Through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, SHIELD identifies and tackles these challenges, helping Ireland address external energy security risks. This multidisciplinary project addresses the complexities of the energy transition by balancing energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability. It will provide critical evidence to support effective policymaking.

Key objectives:

• Identifying global risks that may impact the resilience of energy system transition across energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability.
• Mapping interactions between global risks, especially geopolitical conflicts and critical materials supply chain disruptions, and their effects on Ireland’s energy system.
• Quantifying the impacts of the identified global risks on energy supply and demand in Ireland.
• Analysing vulnerabilities and uncertainties related to critical materials supply disruptions and their effects on Ireland's energy transition.
• Identifying potential risk mitigation solutions that could strengthen Ireland’s energy resilience. This includes exploring the benefits and trade-offs of electrification, diversifying, interconnection, storage, and demand-side solutions.
• Assessing potential solutions for building a resilient energy system and prioritise actions to secure energy, ensure affordability, and mitigate environmental impacts
• Assessing the implications of regional and global disruptions in energy imports on Ireland’s energy security.

Concept

Transitioning to clean energy technologies significantly differs from reliance on traditional hydrocarbon resources. IEA reports indicate that this transition highly depends on rare earth elements, which are critical for essential technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries for stationary storage, and transmission cables. Ensuring the availability and affordability of these critical materials is vital for the transition’s success. However, mining and processing of critical materials is geographically concentrated outside of Ireland, mainly outside of Europe, with a few countries and few major companies playing a dominant role. Any disruptions in critical materials supply chain could therefore increase the risks of supply shortages. Additionally, concerns about materials supply chains have grown due to fears of running out of materials from surging clean energy demand, increasing geopolitical competition for natural resources, and the disruptions associated with the pandemic and conflict in Ukraine. Consequently, energy security has become a very live geopolitical issue, highlighting the need to align the dual goals of achieving net zero emissions energy systems and energy security.

Geopolitical conflicts have the potential to disrupt energy supplies, leading to immediate shortages and price spikes, particularly impacting importing countries and placing pressure on end-users. In transition period, geopolitical tensions will impede developing regional and international low and zero carbon fuel market including natural gas and LNG, electricity, biofuels, and hydrogen.

Ireland’s energy demand is highly fossil dependent. SEAI’s National Energy Balance shows that about 82% of Ireland’s primary energy requirement came from fossil fuel in 2023. During the last three decades Ireland has imports between 65 to 91% of total primary energy requirement. This high import dependency leaves Ireland with increased vulnerability to global supply volatility and highlights classic energy security challenges including availability and affordability. 

Ireland has set an ambitious target of a pathway towards climate neutrality by no later than 2050. Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment (ICCA) reports review an extensive range of solutions ranging from electrification, efficiency improvement, hydrogen, deployment of market-ready renewables, low-carbon heating options to demand reduction. These reports also indicate that a transition to deep decarbonisation pathway can unlock myriad opportunities including a significant reduction in the import of fossil fuels into Ireland.

Transitioning from an oil- and gas-based energy system to a carbon-neutral future will mitigate some traditional energy security risks but also introduce new ones. The transition accompanied predominantly with advanced technologies. Therefore, unlike traditional fossil-based energy system, technologies – not fuels – will play the key role in future Ireland’s renewables-dominated energy systems. This will shift Ireland as fuel-dependant to a technology-dependant nation during the transition period. Considering the scope and scale of the transformations, Ireland should cope with new cross-border energy security risks, including geopolitical disruptions to critical material supply chains, price volatility and availability challenges for clean energy technologies, vulnerabilities in cross-border power grids, sustainability concerns with biomass imports, risks in hydrogen and e-fuels supply and infrastructure, and residual dependencies on oil and gas during the transition.

Research structure and working packages:

An energy system model explores the cost-effectiveness of the potential solutions, and an hourly resolution power system model will assess the operational feasibility of these solutions and determines the additional back-up and storage technologies to ensure a reliable operation of the power system. The figure below shows the research structure, dataflow and work package synergies. The technical component of the research will be conducted in three phases across Work Packages 2-6.

Phase one is a qualitative assessment aimed at comprehensively identifying global risks and potential mitigation strategies within the context of Irish energy systems, within WPs 2-3. This part will qualitatively determine the potential impacts of each risk and solution.

Phase two is a quantitative appraisal within WPs 4-5, where the impacts of identified risks and solutions will be assessed. This part will quantify the extent to which the risks and solution impact Irish energy systems during the transition to clean energy.

Phase three will derive policy implications from various scenarios explored in the previous parts. It aims to build a resilience against cross-border disruptions in WP6.

WP1 and WP7, project management and dissemination and communications, will play a critical part in delivering on the objectives of the research proposal.

Acknowledgement and disclaimer

This project is funded under the EPA Research Programme 2021-2030. The EPA Research Programme is a Government of Ireland initiative funded by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

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