Willow Briquettes Aim To Replace Peat
Entrepreneur Alan Fox and taxpayers are making a big bet that briquettes made from wood will replace peat briquettes beside Irish hearths. Bord na Móna was forced to abandon its popular peat briquettes for climate change reasons, and Fox and his WillowWarm briquettes have stepped into the breech.
WillowWarm is an ambitious project. As Fox related to the Sunday Independent recently, in 2007 the entrepreneur withdrew €15m in savings from his bank, in a single draft. Fox, who made his fortune making industrial boilers, was fearful of a banking collapse that never happened, at least for depositors. He used the cash to buy six farms and embarked on a project to grow willow trees that would be harvested to make briquettes.
The willow briquettes are marketed as carbon neutral on the basis that willow releases the same amount of CO2 when burned that it has absorbed while growing. The same might be said of peat – though, unlike bogs, the willow tree has a lifespan of over 30 years and does not need to be reploughed, re-planted, or re-seeded.
Curating willow is not simple. The saplings have to be protected from animals, and harvesting and drying the wood can be demanding. Willow is in vogue because the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive defines wood biomass as a renewable energy source. Some American critics counter that power plants that burn biomass emit more carbon dioxide than those burning coal.
Alan Fox grows willow on c.2,500 acres of land owned or leased adjacent to the briquette manufacturing plant at the site of a former grain mill at Balrath near Kells in Co. Meath. The initial annual output target for Shamrock Renewable Products is 40,000 tonnes of briquettes and 35,000 tonnes of wood pellets. The next stage of the project envisaged is a 20 megawatt willow-burning power station.
An important piece of the jigsaw for WillowWarm was securing route to market. This was achieved through the acquisition in July 2023 of Stafford Fuels, which for decades imported solid fuels at its New Ross facility. The deal called for the Stafford Fuels Holdings retaining a shareholding.
Shamrock Renewable Products is a 50/50 joint venture between Fox and EMI-MR Investments, also active in the pubs business, who between them had €10m invested in the company in December 2021. The Irish Strategic Investment Fund, guardian of the public pension pot, lent the venture €11m in 2020. Though substantial, the Shamrock loan is a thin shaving in the context of ISIF’s €443m climate investments.