Professor Michael Morris:

In response to who does this, I think that enterprise in the Commission will have a big effect. The idea before us is where to compete. For example, we are very strong in Europe in terms of wind power. The latest figures indicate we have 5% solar power generation. Is it even worth our while thinking about trying to compete with China and America in that space. When we talk about impact, we need to ask what the investment needed is and what will it realise. That is the missing piece when looking at those technologies.

From an Irish point of view, among the energy technologies that are probably most appropriate, wind is certainly the big one. To generate it, we do not have to do an awful lot. We just go to a company and buy off the shelves, they are co-invested and there are opportunities there. Then there is solar and heat pumps. They are the three things we have that we have a chance of implementing by 2030 in terms of our climate goals. I take the point about bioenergy, but the reason it is not so clear in Europe - and I have been involved in some of the discussions - is simply that we do not know whether we can generate enough waste organics to drive a sizeable European industry. That does not mean it does not have a vital contribution to make to local energy generation, particularly in rural communities; it does. It is very important in Ireland; it is less important in Europe. Anything which challenges agriculture and forestry we probably will not want to do. Germany rowed back last year on the use of forestry for energy generation. Wind, solar and heat pumps are the three things but they are accompanied by two other critical elements. First, how do we store energy? Second, how is it transmitted across the grid? I do not mean the Irish grid; I mean the European grid. In essence, we can convert wind energy to hydrogen, but our weather patterns go west to east, so when we are in a very rich vein of capture we should be transmitting our energy to Holland. When they are in the high wind, then it is past us and goes back to us. When we talk about grid energy in this context, that is a critical technology. That is the massive roadblock we have because we have to transmit energy from high wind to low wind, and it has to be done on a European basis. We should therefore not be thinking about one or two interconnectors; we need multiple interconnectors to cope with that. We also need a grid system here so-----