Mr. Peter O'Shea:

It is in there, however, and Deputy Ryan asked me about other experts. UCC is expert in this area and that roadmap has biomass in it. Are there issues with biomass? Yes, there are. There is no doubt about that. From the perspective of Ireland Inc. and the options we have, we are not going to have nuclear and there are issues with biomass but it will contribute somewhat, although it will not deliver the balance of power that we need. That is where we come to CCS as being a technology which has not had the investment we would like to have seen happening over the past ten years or so. We think that increasingly, it will be required because there will be a requirement to have relatively large-scale high-inertia plant on the system to balance out the intermittent renewables. Technology could change. There might be major advances in power electronics that would allow a larger scale of intermittent sources of power on the system but that is not where we are right now.

There was a question in this committee 18 months ago about what our long-term ambition might be. The chief executive of EirGrid mentioned 75% a level of intermittency to which he could see a pathway. At that time, 18 months ago, EirGrid was at 60% and has since got up to 65%. He said we could see a pathway to 75% but could not see a pathway beyond that at that point. It has now gone as far as 65%. We need to get to 75% to deliver an average of 50% of renewables on the system. It is a big requirement. We are at the leading edge of this in Ireland, and are very proud of that, but there is a requirement for us to look at how are we going to make up the last leg of this race. We think Ireland, uniquely, has a requirement for CCS compared with the rest of Europe. As we do not have large-scale hydro or nuclear power, we do not have the options other European countries have.