Young Scientist’s Win Award

Elephant Grass wins an award.

Billy Fehin and Mary Ennis, Transition Year students from Hazelwood College Dromcollogher were last Friday night presented with an Esat BT Young Scientist special award from Comhra, National Sustainable Development Partnership.

With the help of their teacher Ms. Neville their project looked at Elephant Grass or Miscanthus as it is scientifically known. Miscanthus is a perennial low- input, high-output crop that has great biomass energy potential and loves soil with high water retention properties. Basically that means that Miscanthus is a type of grass, never before successfully grown in Ireland that requires very little work to farm but has huge potential to become a new type of environmentally friendly fuel.

This project has also been selected by ENFO to be displayed in their head office in Dublin and the students will be presented with 100 euro’s each by the Minister for the Environment for their research in the area of environmental science.