RESEARCH PROJECTS

Feasta is completing two research contracts at present and intends to bid for more. Both our present contracts were awarded in late 2004 by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. The biggest one is to assess the adequacy of the Environmental Impact Statements prepared for major road projects in the past and to devise a better assessment system for future projects from a complete sustainability perspective. The project manager, David Healy, had to assemble a team of experts from a wide range of disciplines to critique past EISs and to devise indicators that could be used in the new assessment procedure.

The other contract is to look at the effects that very much higher energy prices as a result of oil and gas depletion could have on all sectors of the Irish economy and society and to alert decision-makers to the likely results. The project is managed by Richard Douthwaite and involves two staff members from the Centre for Renewable Energy at the Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Phoebe Bright, a scenarios specialist. It uses a model of the energy flows in the Irish economy that Feasta commissioned for its 2002 conference on Ireland's transition to renewable energy to test the feasibility of the various possibilities being explored.

Because it is uncertain when "oil peak" will occur, the team prepared four scenarios, one pair assuming that it happens about now, the other in 25 years' time. The difference between the scenarios in each pair was that in one, the government and the world community were proactive, in the other, reactive. The scenarios can be found on the project's website, www.energyscenariosireland.com. The results of each have been discussed with business people and others at two one-day seminars organised by the team, at around a dozen events organised by other people, and in many one-to-one meetings. A collective vision of a possible future has been built up, tested by the model and is now being written up in the final report.