Professor Barry McMullin:

I thank the Senator. I do not want to go to deep into the modelling but it is important to discriminate modelling for blackout-type scenarios and grid security. It is very specialised.

EirGrid is excellent at doing this engineering and work modelling. Modelling the interaction between demand and demand constraint, not demand management in the sense of short-term demand management but managing down the overall amount of electricity demand, traditionally is not something that EirGrid or the CRU has been mandated to do, although I think that mandate could change to reflect precisely the precautionary principle. We need a lot of confidence on emissions actually going down and going down quickly.

On the Energy Charter Treaty, I completely agree with the Senator in regard to LNG terminals. Again, I am not a lawyer so I do not want to go too far down that road but, from what I understand, there is certainly a potential exposure there. We only have so much stuff that we can build and while we are still using lots of fossil fuel to build stuff, and that is our current energy system, the more stuff we build other than renewable energy or zero carbon energy infrastructure, the less emissions space we have to build that.

On budgets and the Paris Agreement, the council is required in formulating its budgets to ensure they are consistent with the Paris Agreement obligations, including the role of methane, and the budgets are designed to be inclusive of all gases for the specific purpose of testing the consistency with the Paris Agreement temperature goals. Although I am not party to this process, I assume the council will be using the most appropriate scientific tools we have available, looking at the combined impact of all gases in terms of the temperature goals. I fully expect it will do so.

The other aspect of the Paris Agreement is equity, not just national equity but global equity. It is very important to take that seriously. Ireland, as a society, is very sympathetic to the developing world-----