Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a few questions. Our guests have set out that one has to look at the cost of alternative renewable energy solutions. What is most cost-efficient would be more favoured. I want to ask them about the different renewable sources such as wind, onshore, offshore, solar, anaerobic digestion and the rest. What is the most efficient way? What do taxpayers get the best value for when we are investing, bearing in mind that the cheapest option is fossil fuel and that there will be an initial cost to diversify? We are regularly lobbied about wind energy. Everybody knows that the wind does not always blow. There are those who have eureka moments and state that people are being fooled because the wind does not blow all the time. There is a mix involved. There is sometimes much crude analysis. I ask our guests to go through the various renewable electricity-generating sources and say what they are. We are looking at a new support scheme. There is talk of offshore wind which I know is perhaps more at a developmental stage. We have a massive resource in offshore wind and wave power. To what extent do we invest now for something for which we have a resource but may be a bit more costly? Do our guests take that into account?

On the issue of the grid and transmission, it has been notoriously difficult to get a grid built here in recent years. It is tied up with our ability to bring in renewables on the grid. I want to ask our guests about the comparison between undergrounding and overgrounding. Some of these issues have not gone away. I ask them to comment on that and on what we are losing by not having transmission.

In the context of energy efficiency, retrofitting and grants that are given by the SEAI and local authorities that give grants for energy efficiency measures undertaken on houses, many of these measures say that they relate to heat and are grants for the replacement of oil-fired central heating systems. I understand that it is more efficient. It involves replacing a boiler. However, one will have a boiler for the next certain number of years and will use oil or another fossil fuel. My local authority has a policy whereby it will not put in back-boilers, let people change to wood-burning stoves or that sort of thing. It has put people on a course where the only fuel they can use to heat their homes is oil.

I compliment the local authorities and the SEAI. They have very good energy efficiency initiatives and are obviously reaping the benefits of them. However, there seems to be somewhat of a contradiction. I return to the carbon tax. I am talking not just about people on very low incomes, but also about people who are working, raising families and paying for everything. Realistically, if a carbon tax is slapped on them for using fossil fuels, they will not have the money to buy a new heating system and so on. If the only way they are being directed is this way, are we really being as clever as we should be about going down alternative paths? I am allowing for the fact that Professor Barrett has already said that in the case of people who are, say, dependent on social welfare payments, one could perhaps levy a tax but supplement it by another payment from the Government. I am talking about people who are very hard-pressed - the squeezed middle, as they are called - who cannot afford to make these investments and whose behaviour the carbon tax is therefore not changing. It may stop them from switching on the heat or make their lifestyle more impoverished, which is not what we want. We must come up with technological solutions that will allow people to have decent but more sustainable lifestyles.