Dr. Tara Reale:

Mr. Bolger mentioned that it is section 37 of the Electricity Regulation Act that needs a very simple amendment removing the prohibition. At the moment the only way we can get around it in Ireland is for someone to be an auto-producer and to generate their own electricity on-site. As Mr. Connolly mentioned, however, the land needs to be completely contiguous and the road is deemed as not making said land contiguous. In the UK this is fairly common practice. Lightsource BP owns the project that feeds Belfast International Airport. It is about a mile down the road from the airport, on Crooked Stone Road. These statistics are pre-Covid, but pre-Covid it was supplying about 27% of the airport's annual electricity demand. The legislation there just does not have such restrictions, which means that the operational licences can be obtained by third parties, not just the distribution network operators, DNOs.