Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

I agree with the Deputy that we need to do things better and quicker. We need public and political support to deliver what we are trying to do here. It is not just wind energy, but also grid infrastructure. If we really want to deliver a net zero-carbon economy, we need renewable energy because the electricity grid will be the backbone of not just our electricity supply but of our heating and transport sectors and all our services. We need to start looking at things through the lens of an investment rather than as a cost.

Regarding international best practice, many European countries are trying to double their wind energy resource. This is a challenge faced throughout Europe and across the world based on some of the announcements in other jurisdictions. We work with partners in Wind Europe, our trade association body at European level, to try to identify best practices of engaging with communities. The Deputy is right that we need to do more by going into communities and explaining the benefits not just of wind energy but of infrastructure in general, be that transmission grid, distribution grid, broadband, transport networks, etc. It is a challenge for all of us.

The Deputy asked about the backup capacity. Security of supply is paramount, and we need to ensure that the supply of electricity can remain secure and reliable as we transition to a zero-carbon portfolio. The diversity of renewable energy will certainly help with that. Onshore wind, offshore wind and solar generation have diverse availability patterns. At times when solar might not be available, wind might be available and vice versa.

We need to look further at interconnection and how it works. We need to see the Greenlink interconnector delivered in 2023. We need to see the Celtic interconnector delivered by 2026. This will diversify our security of supply to other jurisdictions and will allow the efficient trade in power so that when we have excess power we can export it and when we do not have power, we can bring it in from other jurisdictions.

In the short to medium term we need to look at long-duration storage. Several technologies today provide multi-hour battery storage, for example. Very often our issues when it comes to security of supply are of a multi-hour timeframe, for four to five hours over the evening peak, as we saw during the wintertime just gone. Multi-hour storage devices charged with renewable energy ideally during other times can be used to provide cover at those evening peaks. They represent one zero-carbon solution that does not depend on fossil fuels.

In the longer term we need market incentives in order to drive a transition towards a carbon-free molecule to combust, be it hydrogen or something else. We really need to think about how we evolve the thermal portfolio of our system away from one that is focused on coal and gas more towards clean carbon source.

The Deputy asked if there were any obstacles to delivering this. The biggest obstacle for both onshore and offshore wind energy is grid infrastructure. We need the grid to be capable of exporting the available power to where it is needed. There are several examples of wind farm projects on the onshore side which have planning permission but are not progressing because the grid infrastructure to deliver the power to where it needs to be is not there.

Similarly, the EirGrid consultation has shown that significant investment is required on the east coast in order to deliver our ambitions there for the 5 GW capacity. We will also need to look at the south coast and west coast in that regard.

Mr. Moran may wish to make comments about the investment in the recent KPMG report that we used.