Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Commission for Regulation of Utilities Strategic Plan: Discussion

Mr. John Melvin:

I would add, in terms of the trilemma of sustainability, security and price, the renewable electricity support scheme offers long-term contracts but through a competitive auction process. The meeting of the targets will be driven largely through competitive auction processes through the renewable electricity support scheme. In those particular schemes, if the price is below a certain level, the renewable generator will get a top-up to meet that. If the price in the market is above that, they will give back the difference. Through that renewable electricity support scheme, one can attempt to meet that balance between sustainability and price.

On the security of supply piece, the capacity market auction is a competitive auction that is held every year. Generators compete with each other to win the contracts to provide sufficient capacity to give us security of supply, again through the use of competition and competitive mechanisms to seek to maintain that balance, this time between security of supply and price. It is done through the creation of the rules and the structures for competition where service providers compete with each other to provide both the sustainability targets and the security of supply targets. That is the competitive mechanism through which we try and maintain the trilemma.

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