Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 29:

In page 7, between lines 6 and 7, to insert the following: “ ‘sustainable’, in relation to energy projects, means energy projects that contribute to full life-cycle emissions reductions and supports the back-up of renewable energy generation;”,”.

This speaks to a discussion we will have, and have had on and off, about energy security and the use of gas as a transitional fuel. This is an important issue. I can see the fossil fuel industry using gas a way of trying to greenwash its activities. I subscribe to an online publication, Natural Gas World. When I first subscribed, it contained a considerable amount of information about the trading being done, petroleum, drilling for oil and so on. That information hardly appears now. It is all about gas, liquefied natural gas, LNG, and how various countries are building terminals and pipelines to dig for and move, ship or import gas. It is all couched in environmentally friendly terms and gas is being presented as a green transitional fuel, but we must blow that myth out of the water, pardon the pun.

This is will be an important debate for us in any energy security review. The argument is that, when we burn it, gas is less intensive than coal and we must therefore move to it as a better way of using energy. However, this does not take into account the full life cycle of what we use, from where it begins to how it is drilled for, fracked and extracted and the impact of those operations on the environment wherever they happen on the planet, be it Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia or wherever. All of these countries are trading in gas, including LNG, and encouraging more investment. This is worrying. As those who inhabit the planet, who have created this mess and who can do something about it, how are we going to change this situation if we promote gas as a transitional fuel in this manner? I feel strongly about the amendment.