Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

With regard to the renewable energy sources, RES, auctions, the RES auction just completed this year sets us on the path to meeting the 2030 target. This is the first important thing to recognise. The large number of solar projects that bid in was also significant. The role of the auctions has impacted the development of a variety of things including the critical constraints around grid, access to grid, and the ability of the ESB and EirGrid to deliver grid connections. Critical in this is the issue of constraint or curtailment and grid constraints. This is not very glamorous but we are already starting to see a significant amount of curtailment of the wind we do have, because of grid restrictions. That is one of the limiting factors in it. I expect it to be, if not annual, certainly very regular. Similarly, offshore would not be annual, but not multiannual gaps. It takes a long time to go from the auction to delivery of the projects. We have ambitious targets to meet and we want to go further and faster if we can. Doing it in a step basis where there are regular auctions is much better than betting it all on one big auction system. I would expect in each case maybe two or three auctions within the lifetime of this Government for each area, if not more. That is the sort of timeframe. Effectively it would be annually, but with a variety of different approaches, onshore or offshore.

The Deputy is right with regard to biofuels. Most of the generation of the target was reached with the use of blending in bioethanol and biodiesel. On the ethanol side there are technical limitations as to how much the engines can actually cope with. On the biodiesel side the real constraint is around environmental constraints such as land use implications and long-term or major expansion in fuel supplies. We absolutely want to use waste materials and convert them to biofuels. While there may well be further developments in that regard it is limited.

The original directive, from memory, included electricity as a renewable fuel in meeting that renewable target. We see the real potential in the switch to the electrification of transport. Another key point, and going back to the argument of efficiency being everything, is that the key metric should be how to reduce the amount or volume of travel needed. Nobody looks for a long distance commute as a quality of life measure. There is nothing low-carbon in having a really sprawled development model. There is everything to be gained from a 15 minute city with services in close reach of community. This is for social and community reasons as well as for zero carbon reasons. Our first key target should be looking to see how we can reduce the amount of long-distance commuting as a quality of life measure as well as to reduce the use of fuel. With Covid there is now a strange opportunity to deliver on this.