Dr. Brian Motherway:

I thank the Deputy for his questions and commend him on his detailed knowledge. He asked about geothermal energy. Currently, we do not provide grant aid for geothermal, although we have in the past. Our focus now is on insulation and heating systems in the more conventional sense. However, I take the Deputy's point. Technologies including geothermal and wood pellet will become more important in the future. Our interest is in finding ways to develop markets so that on the supply side one has skilled installers, good technology and a competitive market. On the demand side, people would have a choice available in terms of costs, benefits and use. It is a challenge and a great deal of change is needed in the sector. I replaced my boiler a few years ago and got a very conservative fitter who did not want any truck with new technology. He wanted to sell me the old boiler he has always sold. We support stoves via our energy efficiency obligation scheme whereby energy retail companies must meet efficiency targets. Some of them are supporting stove installation to obtain credits in that regard. I take the Deputy's point that stoves are an interesting solution in many cases and an important step towards efficiency and cost reduction. People with stoves can use local wood supply, which is important.

The Deputy is right about the misinformation on wind. Our role is partly to publicise the facts and set out the national benefits. The scale question is important. I hear people say they are planning to build 25,000 MW and, as such, I must make it clear that the only certain plan in Ireland currently is to build another 2,500 MW of wind between now and the end of the decade to meet our 2020 target. That will double what we have now. There is clearly some uncertainty as to the nature of the intergovernmental agreement on export projects. I also hear people quoting numbers of applications to the regulator for grid connections. Most of that will never be built. Right now, we are talking about going from what we have now to a further 2,500 MW. What happens beyond 2020 depends on European policy, Irish policy, grid issues and export issues. I would like to see more wind built but it will never be on the scale some people talk about.

Biomass is a very important resource for us and will play an important part in meeting the 2020 targets. In my view, it is best to focus on heat, especially when one considers how many people are using oil to heat their homes. Biomass is a very interesting substitution for that. I have read the BW report to which the Deputy referred and I have some serious concerns about some of the statistics it contains. Some of the figures on the costs of the biomass resource are out by hundreds of millions of euro. They underestimate by using British figures on the cost of biomass. It is a very different story here. There is a wider question of where the resource would come from. The amount of resource they are talking about putting into Moneypoint is more than the entire national biomass resource we currently have. That suggests importing it from all over the world at a heavy shipping cost. Will the resource come from sustainable places? There are significant unanswered questions. There are no simple solutions like that where one thing will solve all of these complex problems.

Our biomass resource is best used for heat in my view. If one puts large amounts of biomass into a station like Moneypoint, one loses two thirds of it up the chimney as waste. If one uses it to heat a home, one captures more than 90% of the energy value. I mention a project I visited recently in Tralee where biomass was being used to heat hundreds of homes on a district basis at lower cost and very high levels of comfort. All of the resource there comes from within 20 km or 30 km of the town as opposed to coming from abroad and making other countries rich. Biomass has its place but I am not sure there is a magic, stroke-of-the-pen solution whereby we convert Moneypoint and all our problems disappear.

In the past few years, we have funded a small number of trials for micro-generation, including hydro. We found that in the right place, hydro works very well, which is what the Deputy suggested. In fact, there are not that many of those right places. The big stations like Ardnacrusha have served us very well and will continue to do so, but micro-hydro does not have huge potential in volume terms for Ireland. There are a certain number of local sites where it works excellently.