Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I realise the Deputy is making a broader point in terms of the wider community. However, it is not true to say that the economics of wind generation are negative. We can have a debate in this committee and we can bring forward the data we have. We have data from the 2015 report of the Council of European Energy Regulators. The report demonstrates that the per-unit supports for renewable electricity in Ireland are among the lowest in Europe.

I can give the Deputy figures for 2014 on what we have saved in respect of fossil imports as a consequence of the deployment of wind energy, as the SEAI published them last week and they are on its website. He can see for himself what the saving is and the value of wind. We are not saying it is the only technology and type of renewable energy we can use, as we can use others as well, but I respectfully say it will feature prominently. The Deputy is right that we need to get our heads around it as a community and we need to debate it and ensure it is understood, not in a dictatorial way by the Government but in a way that shares information with people. The ideas outlined by the Deputy are very good.

Sometimes people say that a turbine or wind farm operates only so many days a week or so many hours at day. We know that wind is intermittent. I am not directing this to Deputy Fitzmaurice, but it is well understood that wind is intermittent and that there are days when the wind does not blow. However we also have days such as, if my memory is correct, last Sunday, when 53% of our electricity was generated from wind. One can see this on the Eirgrid app. The fact it is intermittent is why we must develop new technologies for storage. Amazing work is being done throughout the world on addressing and mitigating the problem of intermittency with wind. If this can be solved it will be an enormous step forward, because we could migrate to renewable energy much more quickly than any of us think is possible at present. These are the types of issues on which we could do better sharing and debating with the public.

We have a requirement under the directives to keep 90 days of oil reserves. In the past, the old Irish National Petroleum Corporation, INPC, used to do what the Deputy suggested, which is to buy oil ahead, but I am not sure whether state aid rules would allow us to do so now. To return to gas, we now have a mix and we have discussed this. I discussed the transition with Deputy Colreavy, and it seems it is likely that of our fuel mix of oil, coal and gas, gas will be the preferred fossil of the transition.