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Abstract
Ireland is currently importing 90 percent of its energy. The burning of domestically produced nonrenewable
peat provides 4.9 percent of Ireland’s total primary energy supply while renewable
biomass crops currently account for only 1 percent of the domestically produced energy supply. The
Irish government have set a target of 30% of peat (approximately 0.9 million tonnes) used for
electricity generation to be replaced by renewable energy crops. This would be equivalent to
approximately 0.6 million tonnes of biomass crops or approximately 45,000 hectares of biomass.
Direct payments and subsidies accounted for over 100 percent of average family farm income on beef
and sheep farms in 2006. Therefore there appears to be significant potential for Irish farmers to
replace conventional agricultural enterprises with biomass crops. A probit model was built to identify
the socio-economic characteristics of farmers who may be willing to adopt energy crop production.
The results from this were used in the construction of a linear programming model to determine the
optimal enterprise for each farmer at varying energy prices.