Mr. Philip Newsome:

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to address the committee this morning. I am the principal officer responsible for renewable electricity in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. I am accompanied by my colleagues, Mr. John Finnegan, who is the principal officer for the electricity networks and systems division, and Mr. Rory Somers from our retail energy policy and regulation division. We will use our opening remarks to address the topic of community sustainable energy for our offshore islands and, in particular, the opportunities for renewable electricity generation as well as a number of specific issues related to the electricity network the committee has indicated it would like to discuss.

The climate action plan sets out a roadmap for taking decisive action to ensure up to 80% of our electricity will come from renewable sources by 2030. In this context, a key priority is enabling citizen and community participation in the energy transition across the country, including in rural communities on our offshore islands. There are a range of measures outlined in the climate action plan to increase the scale of the roll-out of renewables on the grid to achieve help these aims. I will highlight a few areas that are relevant to the topic of today’s meeting.

The renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, is an auction-based support scheme to support the roll-out of grid scale renewable electricity. The first RESS auction, RESS 1, for onshore wind and solar energy projects successfully concluded in September 2020 with 63 projects progressing through delivery milestones to energisation by the end of 2023. Following on from that first auction, a second RESS auction is scheduled to take place in May 2022 with further onshore and offshore auctions planned.

A core aspect of the RESS is the provision of pathways for communities to participate in renewable electricity generation. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland has developed a number of toolkits and a trusted intermediary service to begin to assist communities in the development of their own projects. The first four of these toolkits, covering grid connections, solar photovoltaic, PV, technology, the planning process and onshore wind energy, are available on the SEAI website, with more to be developed in the coming months. A trusted intermediary service is also now in place to assist community projects. A trusted advisory service for expert financial, grid and planning advice and financial enabling grant supports is also to be delivered in the second quarter of this year.

Micro and small-scale generation will also have a key role to play in helping us to achieve our overall renewable electricity and climate targets and will allow island citizens and communities to take part in the energy transition. In that respect, the introduction of the clean export guarantee tariff represents the first phase of a comprehensive enabling framework for micro and small-scale generators in Ireland. It allows them to receive payment from their electricity supplier for all excess renewable electricity they export to the grid, reflecting the market value of the electricity.

The micro-generation support scheme approved by Government on 21 December 2021 provides capital grants for new domestic installations and will provide grants for new small non-domestic solar PV installations later this year. Larger non-domestic users, including farms, businesses, schools and community buildings, that install new larger installations can avail of a clean export premium tariff, which will provide a fixed tariff for 15 years for electricity exported to the grid in conjunction with the clean export guarantee.

The Climate Action Plan 2021 commits to the development of a support scheme for small-scale generators above 50 kW but smaller than those supported by the renewable electricity support scheme, RESS. This is being progressed this year and is expected to become available in by early 2023. This scheme will enable larger businesses, farms and community projects to maximise their participation in the energy transition.

In addition to these measures, through Ireland’s participation in the clean energy for EU islands initiative, our rural island communities can be part of the clean energy transition of the more than 2,200 inhabited European islands. We currently have 12 of Ireland’s offshore islands as member communities across the sustainable energy communities network. I will move over now and I call on my colleague, Mr. Finnegan, to talk about the electricity grid.