Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Energy - Ambition and Challenges: Discussion

Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

I mentioned earlier that we have the pipeline of projects and can accelerate the delivery. We are trying deliver 5 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. That is a challenge, as we have discussed this morning. More than 20 GW worth of offshore projects are in development around the coast of Ireland right now, all of which could deliver if they were given the right infrastructure, policy and legislative regime to do so. We carried out research with UCC MaREI last year looking at how to completely decarbonise Ireland. It showed that we needed 25 GW of renewable energy by 2050 purely for our own domestic use. If we were to accelerate that and try to export that to Europe in the short term, that would absolutely pay off in the long term as we look to electrify our heating and transport to get those sectors away from fossil fuel imports.

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