JHM Crops Ltd.

JHM and Barry O'Shaughnessy nominated for the SEAI Awards!


The annual Sustainable Energy Awards are intended to encourage, recognise and reward excellence in energy management in the industrial, commercial and public sectors. The awards is open to individuals, groups and organisations who demonstrate a commitment to include energy management as part of their overall management structure and provide an opportunity for organisations, regardless of size, to gain public recognition for their achievements in reducing energy use and emissions. This is the only awards scheme recognising best practice in energy performance, management and design.
Barry O'Shaughnessy, who grows Miscanthus in Co. Limerick with JHM Crops, installed the first dedicated domestic Miscanthus pellet boiler in Ireland. Barry is very happy with the performance of his 25kW boiler which heats two houses. He already grows 10 acres of Miscanthus with JHM Crops and two of these acres yield enough Miscanthus to heat his two houses. He can then sell the rest to other local end users through JHM. Such a model offers huge potential to those already growing Miscanthus with JHM as well as domestic users of oil who want to reduce high heating costs. This model locks in energy production and end use in the local area and reduces heating bills. Over 12 months of research was undertaken by Barry O'Shaughnessy and JHM Crops into the possibilities of installing a Miscanthus boiler on Barry's site. There were many examples in Europe of such boilers burning Miscanthus and the boiler companies contacted were happy to work with Miscanthus as a fuel.
What Barry and JHM have achieved here is to pioneer a model for energy crop growers in Ireland whereby each grower can have a secure, carbon negative and cost-effective fuel source to heat their own house. The potential of this model is self-evident from the point of view of what Barry has already saved on oil costs from previous years. SEAI obviously feel equally enthusiastic about this project having nominated for this award under the Renewable Energy Systems Award Category.