"Fossil fuels are dead, as a viable energy source. Renewable energy is the way of the future."
Mickey McCloskey’s words would doubtless horrify his father, Jim McCloskey, whose business was of the fossil fuels era. From early commercial beginnings in the Waterside, the McCloskeys ran a fireplace business on Shipquay Street through the 1970s an
d 1980s.
Mickey McCloskey founded his renewable energies company Nutherm on a personal conviction that one day, government would come round to agree that the days of fossil power are numbered. He now sees signs that this shift in government policy is inevitable.
McCloskey is a heating engineer who worked for years as a process mechanic in Du Pont, before moving to manage the heating plant in Magee College for ten years after that.
He was not the only one who did not opt to take on the family fireplace business. Over the years, the rest of the McCloskey family have also diversified their activities considerably.
“My brother, Professor John McCloskey, is an expert in earthquakes at the UU in Coleraine. My sister Ann is a doctor in Shantallow, and Frankie, my other brother, is a well-known Irish language activist,” McCloskey said.
Today, Mickey McCloskey runs Nutherm on a converted farm in Manorcunningham, providing geothermal temperature control systems which heat (or cool) buildings using subterranean energy from the surrounding ground. The energy is collected and concentrated in an electrically-powered heat pump, and electricity is the ‘running cost’ at the heart of a geothermal system.
The idea for Nutherm came when he installed a geothermal heating system in his own house on Inch Island, and from there became distributor for Ireland for the geothermal technology of Europe’s leading geo-heating specialist, Waterkotte, near Dusseldorf.
From the consumer’s point of view, the spiralling cost of conventional energies such as coal, oil and gas have made alternative energies competitive.
“You are looking at heating that costs one-fifth of the running costs of oil. What would cost you £1,000 with oil would cost you £200 using geothermal,” McCloskey said.
‘Save you money’
“If a geothermal system does not save you money on your first month’s fuel bill, compared to other forms of energy, then you shouldn’t do it. That’s the basis we sell on,” he said.
“People look at geothermal as some kind of ‘hippy’ technology - you will be nearly warm enough, your water will be lukewarm, and in the evening you can pull on a cardigan. That is not the case. This system will completely replace the boiler,” said McCloskey.
“From next year, when you rent or sell a property, you must produce a certificate giving an energy rating for that property. That rating will determine how much you pay.”
There is no grant aid available for geothermal systems at present.
