Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Apologies for being late as I was at a national planning forum event that ran late. I have read the presentations and I have a few short questions. When I read the ESB approach, and I would be interested to hear anyone else's view on it, effectively we are talking about 100% decarbonisation of our energy system by 2050. Decarbonisation is what is what I read into it. There are transport and agriculture elements, but that is our part of meeting the climate action goals. Am I right on that?

The witnesses have said specifically in their written presentations that some of the proposals around biomass and capacity remuneration around the clean energy package may inadvertently limit member states' specific solutions. I would be interested in hearing the details of what the witnesses are looking for in that regard.

I would appreciate it if the witnesses could outline their capital spend this year, the main items of expenditure and whether they applied for any funding from the Connecting Europe Facility, the European Investment Bank funding or the Juncker plan investment fund? We talk about these big retrofit programmes and so on but have the witnesses any specific projects where they are looking for funding from any of those European funding sources?

I was very interested that the SEAI said we may be looking at some solutions in renewable transport. Will the authority indicate what we may be looking at? Mr. Gannon mentioned it and perhaps he could expand on what we could be doing in renewable energy and transport.

I have two final questions, one of which is for the CER. I seem to recall that we started doing the cost-benefit analysis on the smart metering programme in 2010. Is the CER satisfied that it has taken us eight years to do a cost-benefit analysis? Is there a risk that Ireland is falling behind other countries in this consumer focused energy system, if it has taken Ireland eight years to just do a cost-benefit analysis, particularly given the ESB has done very detailed consumer surveys? We have oodles of data, more than anywhere else. Is the CER happy that it has taken eight years to do a cost-benefit analysis?

I have some questions also for EirGrid. If we do not proceed with the North-South interconnector, is it feasible or possible that the Northern energy authorities may instead look for a grid interconnection across to Scotland or the UK to provide the energy security they may need? Has this ever been raised as a risk in the mix?

Last but not least, my vision is that if we had 100% decarbonisation of the energy system, the more interconnection we would have, the cheaper it would be. It does not have to be curtailed. It can be balanced and it is fundamentally the big picture. We are going to go to with the north-western European and probably a wider energy balancing system with interconnection in all sorts of different locations. Why is EirGrid not looking for other interconnectors with the UK in this regard? Is there a risk we will end up with private interconnectors and we would run into the same problems we had with the Midlands project in not getting the benefits of the balancing capability where a national transmission system operator can use it, as it has a different economic assessment because it has the wider societal and other balancing benefits? Are we at risk of seeing private interconnection replacing the State investment in further interconnection with the UK? I would be interested to know this, given that in the Connecting Europe facility, as I recall, about four or five interconnectors would have been funded between the UK and Ireland in the most ambitious ten-year plan. Why have we not looked at the possibility of any further interconnection with the UK?