Dr. Hannah Daly:

I thank Professor Ó Gallachóir and Deputy Farrell for the question. I will give an overview of the pathway forward for the electricity system. The Deputy mentioned gas and the difficulties with geopolitics. I will not get into geopolitics but I will outline the rationale for the need for additional gas capacity in the short term. First, gas-fired electricity generation has approximately half of the CO2 emissions of coal and even less than that of peat. The first need for additional gas in the system is to replace coal, oil and peat as quickly as possible. It is also a very flexible source of generation to balance intermittent renewables. Our electricity demand is set to grow very rapidly with the growing economy, the electrification of heat and transport and the growth of large energy users such as data centres. While there is a short-term need for additional gas capacity, there is also a need to move to a zero-carbon electricity system as quickly as possible. That requires interconnection, storage in the form of batteries and, most likely, a green hydrogen economy and flexibility in demand. While we are building the electricity system, we need to make it in such a way as to be zero carbon as quickly as possible, which will likely be in the 2030s, to meet our net zero target.

The Deputy asked if the wind energy sector is capable of ramping up. It is not within my remit to comment on that. I will say that a cornerstone of the carbon budget programme is for the wind energy sector to ramp up. If that does not happen, it will be very problematic for meeting targets.

I will reflect briefly on the Deputy's question on whether the planning system is doing enough. Again, I cannot comment specifically on individual projects. There are, however, very many win-wins in the area of dense development at the urban level but we should not forget villages and towns either. It is currently very difficult for people to build a house on the periphery of a village to allow them to walk or cycle to do their daily activities.

We modelled a low-energy demand scenario, which is a broad picture of the situation if we moved to this more integrated planning approach where people live in denser neighbourhoods and buildings are smaller and much more efficient. It makes the transition far cheaper and far more feasible and requires less dramatic technology change for a given level of decarbonisation, which is important to note.