James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the helpful presentation. I read it in advance and have listened to some here. Deputy Stanley asked about storage. I am interested in that too. I understand that storage is the great holy grail of the energy industry. If we could crack that, we could solve many problems. What options are presented by new technology? The witnesses may or may not have an answer to this question. We had a similar discussion on the same Bill last week and we had some geologists in the room.

Those who oppose these measures suggest that we should not keep it in the ground but, rather, continue to explore and extract these potentially rich resources off the coast, particularly the west coast and possibly the south coast. However, Deputy Eamon Ryan posed the interesting question as to why, if there are such rich resources, they have not yet been brought onshore. Why has it taken 50 years to so do? I am somewhat sceptical of the potential of such fields, which may be speculative. Geologists pointed out to the committee that technology has advanced and there are new and better ways to detect and extract from previously unknown fields. I am interested in the representatives' views in that regard. Do such great resources exist? If they do, why are some people putting up such a fight in that regard?

On renewables, the maps provided by Mr. Muttitt show the prevalence of offshore wind in the United Kingdom, primarily on its west coast and off the coast of Scotland. There is huge potential for offshore wind off the west coast of Ireland. I recently attended a conference on international and pan-European energy security. Renewables offer a great opportunity to move energy such that when wind is blowing on the west coast of Ireland and people in Germany are waking up and boiling their kettles we can provide them with power, and vice versa, in the scenario of a mixed basket of energy with renewables in one part of the continent, a fossil fuel plant in another and a nuclear plant in another. The idea is that energy can be moved around. As demand in different time zones kicks into the grid, one place would be sustained by wind, another by an old-fashioned fossil fuel plant, etc. At the conference it was argued that such a combination of energy sources provides a high level of energy security and enables countries to trade energy, thus sustaining the European energy network. In a renewable-only scenario, is there a risk that energy security might decrease because all of our eggs would be in one basket or would there still be geographical interplay such that if the wind is not blowing on the west coast of Ireland, it may be blowing on the central plains of Germany? Brexit may cause problems in terms of British involvement in such a scenario. European energy agreements should be maintained even if change occurs in other areas as a result of Brexit.

There has been much community backlash in Ireland regarding onshore wind and many communities have not bought into the idea of having wind farms on their doorstep, which has caused many difficulties in the roll-out of onshore wind power. Offshore wind energy generation does not involve that difficulty. It is more expensive than onshore and involves engineering difficulties but it does not meet the same community resistance. Perhaps lessons can be learned from the British experience of onshore wind to find ways for communities to support rather than oppose such projects, which would make the process easier.