Mr. Kevin Brady:

I am the head of heating, transport and energy policy at the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. The Department supports the transition to a sustainable transport system primarily through energy policy. This includes promoting the use of renewable fuels and supporting the move to low-emission vehicles. The transport sector is responsible for approximately 36% of Ireland’s total primary energy requirement and its emissions constitute 20% of total emissions and 27% of non-emissions trading system, ETS, emissions. It is a large sector.

Our target is for 10% of energy used in the transport sector to come from renewable sources by 2020. We are currently above 7% and on our way to meeting this target. This is calculated in line with the renewable energy directive which was discussed earlier and includes the use of multipliers for biofuels that are produced from wastes and residues and for renewable energy used in electric vehicles. The level of renewable energy used in the transport system in 2020 is expected to be between 9% and 10%. It is therefore expected that Ireland will achieve 90% compliance with this target.

It was discussed in the previous session but the primary driver of renewable energy use in the transport sector is the biofuels obligation scheme. This was introduced in 2010 and is administered by the National Oil Reserves Agency. The scheme obliges each fuel supplier in the road transport sector, including all the household names we know, to ensure a certain proportion of all fuel supplied is from renewable sources. Under the scheme, biofuels placed on the market must adhere to sustainability criteria. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, estimates that the biofuels obligation scheme avoided 340,000 tonnes of emissions in 2017, which is the latest year for which data are available. The obligation increased at the start of this year and it will increase again from the start of 2020. We believe this increase will lead to approximately 6% biofuel in diesel and 5% in petrol. This mix is known as E5 and is already widely available, as was discussed earlier. A public consultation was recently carried out. It actually closed yesterday. We received approximately 40 submissions, which we will be publishing on our website. This consultation related to the development of the scheme for the period from 2021 to 2030. It examines the implementation of the elements of the renewable energy directive that pertain to renewable fuels in transport.

It also considers how best to achieve the ambition set out in the climate action plan of 12% biofuel in diesel and 10% in petrol by 2030, a doubling of the levels expected in 2020. I recognise that during the previous session it was set out that there are absolutely no issues in regard to E10 but there are some issues that we need to explore in this consultation, including compatibility issues for older cars. The responses received to this public consultation will inform the future development of the biofuels obligation scheme.

Ms Hanlon has covered the low emission vehicle task force. Briefly, the Department also supports the transition to low emission vehicles and works closely with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in this regard with the two Departments co-chairing the low emission vehicle task force which brought together Departments, agencies, State bodies and stakeholders to consider a range of measures and options available to Government to accelerate the take-up of low emission vehicles.

The first phase of the task force’s work focused on electric vehicles with the second phase primarily focused on other low emission vehicles, such as compressed natural gas and hydrogen. One report was published last year and the other was published more recently, which cover its work and set out the considerations by Government.

In addition to supports from the Departments of Finance and Transport, Tourism and Sport, the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment provides a number of supports which include purchase grants for electric vehicles, grants to support the installation of home chargers and, most recently, grants to support local authorities installing on-street chargers.

Budget 2020 provided the Department with a total of €36 million in funding for electric vehicle supports, with €30 million allocated to the purchase grant and €6 million to support the development of charging infrastructure.

The climate action fund is administered by the Department. One of the successful projects under the first call for applications from the fund include €10 million to support the ESB developing a state-of-the-art fast-charging network for Ireland. This project will provide 90 new high-speed chargers with a power of 150 kW which is three times the current fast chargers. These can each charge two electric vehicles at once and are three times the power or speed of the current fast chargers in Ireland. It will upgrade 50 existing standard chargers to fast chargers; and replace more than 250 standard chargers, each which consists of two charging points, totalling more than 500 charge points, so that the vast majority of charging points across Ireland will be replaced with next generation high-reliability models.

The Government, as part of the climate action plan, has set a target of achieving 936,000 electric vehicles in Ireland by 2030. In order to support the achievement of this target, the plan has set out a number of actions which include: developing the charging network necessary to support the growth of electric vehicles and to stay sufficiently ahead of demand; developing the compressed natural gas, CNG, fuelling network to support the uptake of CNG vehicles, particularly in the road freight sector; increasing the use of biofuels, as I discussed; developing a roadmap on the optimum mix of regulatory, taxation and subsidy policies to drive a significant ramp-up in electric vehicles; and introducing legislation to ban the sale of new fossil fuel cars from 2030.

The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment is working with our colleagues in other Departments, agencies and State bodies to implement these actions.