Professor John FitzGerald:

I will try to group them logically. The Chairman asked about alternative clean energy. One option is that we electrify heating but we do not know whether that is the right answer until we know about electricity, and that is one of the areas we need to explore. Also, we are failing in our renewable heating obligation, more in rural areas than urban areas, and biomass may be an option, but as I indicated, much depends on the relative prices.

Deputy Stanley asked about converting to biomass. I agree with him. On a large scale that does not makes sense. However, in rural areas, a wood chip burner rather than oil may well make sense. There are different ways of using biomass but I disagree with the Department on converting the peat stations to burning biomass. Even if they burn 30% biomass, they will still be emitting more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than anything else in Ireland.

I did a study on large-scale biomass with ESB International, Teagasc and another company 20 years ago. In terms of the issue of biomass, it did not look as if burning it on a large scale made sense. It is in the smaller scale usage. It comes back to the point raised by Deputy Lowry about land use change, and here things fit together. Farmers were making very little out of beef, and they are still making very little out of beef. However, the study showed that if farmers switched from beef production, particularly on drumlin soils, to growing pollarded willow or whatever as biomass, less methane would be emitted from the cattle, the farmers would potentially make more money out of the biomass if there was a market, and the timber would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It would be a potential win-win. There are possibilities here in terms of changing land use where agriculture can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Another policy which is very bad in a different context is draining the swamp. Draining the swamp is also very bad in terms of peatlands because peatlands absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. They suck it out and make the climate better. In terms of providing incentives to make better use of lands, I do not have the answers. Land use change can make a big difference.

In terms of electric vehicles and transport, investing in public transport makes huge sense, in particular combined with the national planning framework. We need to live much more densely. A study done by the University of Limerick showed that people living in Limerick emitted much less carbon dioxide per head than people in surrounding villages because the people from the surrounding villages were commuting into Limerick. We need to reduce commuting, which will be a win-win for everybody.

The Chairman and another member raised the issue of heating and supporting vulnerable households in that she talked about the cost of retrofit. The State cannot subsidise that. It should be profitable for people to retrofit their homes. There is the problem of the divorce index. Myself and my wife decided that we had to make changes. She wanted to go ahead immediately and we did. She won. We had to re-plumb the entire house to put in a really efficient boiler and at the same time we insulated the house. It was chaos. We did not divorce, but it is about the behavioural problems of households. Our heating bills are 70% of what they were previously so it made eminent economic sense but with households, we are dealing with much more complex issues. There are rural households where the people are elderly, poor and using solid fuels. It would make sense for the State to go in but if someone knocks on the door of a house up a valley in Kerry and says, "We are here to turn your house upside down and make you comfortable", will that work? In the area of households, we need, first, to target the very vulnerable households if we are going to spend State money and then, second, work out how to do that. It is not just about price or subsidies. It is how we get people to change who are scared and will be disrupted. It is a more complex issue. It is not just about price. There are other issues.

Regarding peat, Deputy Lowry said that jobs are at stake but it would have been better if the €100 million being spent this year had been spent on creating a lot of jobs. We need to make a change in that regard and, as I said, I do not believe biomass is part of the solution. I have not answered all the questions but I have tried to do so.