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

The announcement last week by the ESB was very significant, but not just for the people in Clare and the Shannon Estuary. It is an indication of where we are going. I said on the day that if the scale of the project were multiplied by 25, it would reflect the level of commitment in the programme for Government. It is not just in the programme for Government as this was agreed by the all-party Oireachtas committee during the term of the last Dáil. I have shared details at the climate committee. Consistent political support for projects is really important because the project in question will be a five-Government project in that it will take 20 years to roll out. The more political certainty and good planning certainty there is associated with it, the lower the risk and cost and the greater the innovation and attractiveness of Ireland as a centre for this kind of development. We will not be the only people doing this. East coast USA is now switching to offshore wind energy, significantly under the Biden administration. The UK is already way ahead and accelerating.

We can expect something like 300 GW of power in the North Sea and Baltic Sea over a 20-year or 30-year time horizon. Our 35 GW, by comparison, is not out of scale. It is appropriate. It gives us a huge economic opportunity because we have a comparative competitive advantage. Ireland happens to be one of the windiest places on the planet. Even with climate change, which will see changes to the global weather systems, it is still likely that north-west Europe and our part of the Atlantic will still be very windy. There is always a temperature differential between land and sea that means wind at sea is typically steadier and more consistent.

If in the end we are producing seven times our current demand, if we get this right, the real question is what we will do with it. It will require transportation. A lot will be transported along the high-voltage, direct current cable as part of a European grid to a balancing grid, giving us export capability, but there is also great potential for conversion to hydrogen, which could be used as a backup. For example, the ESB is referring to having backup power generation at the likes of Moneypoint to match the wind when it is not blowing. That is a very attractive prospect in that there would be balancing capability and a secure economic energy system for the future, with zero carbon emissions. We would be at a comparative advantage because Ireland is windier than other places. That will start to attract industries seeking to avail of clean power, such as digital industries, biopharmaceutical companies and other manufacturing companies. In the future, one will go to where the clean power is most available. It is not just that the proposal could bring energy infrastructure and jobs to Moneypoint, Clare, as it could also bring other jobs. The Marine Planning and Development Management Bill, which is due to be published in the coming weeks, is critical in this regard. It relates to why we are backing up our research. The research budget has increased in this category by 42% year on year. The main beneficiary was the SEAI's national energy research development and demonstration programme, regarding which expenditure increased from €4.5 million in 2020 to €9 million this year. The allocation for ocean energy research and development also doubled, increasing from €3 million last year to €6 million this year. That has to be part of a consistent long-term trend. Where investment in research is concerned, one cannot just turn on and off the tap. We have a lot of expertise in the likes of MaREI, in ocean energy systems, and UCD, in energy power systems and wider energy analysis. In Galway, many good people are working on the hydrogen issue. I have seen research on this. In the likes of LIT and UL, there is also capability.

The research on hydrogen energy is still in the very early stages. There is a bit of a race between the Germans, British, Dutch and many other countries that are backing hydrogen. The exact application, be it in transport, industry or power generation, is still to be determined. We hear different views on it, but such is the scale of investment and confidence in the use of hydrogen, on the part of the European Commission and large economies, that it now seems it is very likely to be a way of storing and using renewable power, particularly in a place like Ireland, where it will work at scale. Where the cost of the conversation of hydrogen and the end-use application are concerned, it seems to me that the economics will work at scale close to the point of landing. That is what I am hearing but it may change. If hydrogen development is at the scale of solar power development over the past ten years, it will change utterly. The economics will change. We have to invest now in the expectation that we will deliver the same cost reductions. It will take ten years but we will very much be in the game, partly because we have such a level of wind power supply available to us.