Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There are quite a few points and I will try to deal with them all. I will pick up on the two points on vehicles and retrofits as examples of where progress is possible. In both cases, we are ahead of target. Although I do not have the exact final figure, more than 37,000 houses will be retrofitted this year, which is ahead of what was planned. The low-interest loans which will kick in during January and February next year will further bolster that because it will open up the grant system to those who are not currently eligible for the warmer homes scheme. I do not see that stopping. The key thing that we have to learn is that it must not be stop-start and we have to build up the supply chain, which has been the biggest constraint, for example, with regard to getting the contractors. Retrofitting is a very good example of that.

With regard to the weight of cars, there will be heavier cars coming because the electric cars are coming and they are also heavy, but they are heavy in a different way to the large SUVs. We are now at about 28% for plug-in, 21% for full EV and 7% or 8% for plug-in hybrids. Again, I do not see that reversing. We are ahead of the UK, which is our nearest and most obvious competitor. We will have to look at the tax issue next October. One of the things I will be saying to the Minister for Finance is that we need to consider the emissions of an SUV over the ten to 15 years of its lifetime, apart from the safety issues. We need to consider what is the cost to the Exchequer if we do not meet our European commitments and targets as we would have to pay for closing the gap through statistical transfers with other countries if we do not meet our effort-sharing agreement. I hope that may change the Department of Finance's view in terms of continuing where we have been going, which is to tax more for the high-polluting and less for the non-polluting. The economic case for that becomes all the stronger when we realise that an SUV running for 15 years is costing the Irish public in terms of its emissions, which may be above target, and therefore, that may justify ongoing revisions to our tax system, which I think the Deputy is suggesting. However, that is part of the budget process and we will have to agree it in October next year.

The Deputy mentioned the transport issue. One of the mechanisms we have to help us is the use of the climate action fund. The Deputy was there as Minister and he gave the first allocation to the district heating scheme, with €20 million to the ESB and others, and it has since built up. There are a number of projects that I believe are best funded through the climate action fund, and included in that is the widespread deployment of mobility hubs - I understand the Deputy has a similar perspective. The only example so far was the one delivered by Dublin City Council in Finglas about a year and a half ago, and it is an e-car and e-bike sharing system. There is a great benefit to be had from this. We are not just going to replace every combustion engine car with an electric car as we would still have congestion problems and we would be trading an import dependency on oil and gas for an import dependency on rare batteries, minerals and so on. Moving towards promoting car sharing as a concept is a key part of where we need to go, and one of the projects we will launch next year is the mobility hub concept spread out much more widely. It will probably start in cities, and we will probably start in one city and then develop and deploy it, and use the climate action fund to support that. Hopefully, we can create a model whereby car sharing becomes a much more convenient and cheaper option for people to have mobility.

The Deputy asked why we are not seeing the level of renewables that we want and expect. I would give three reasons or three issues that we need to address. The first is the planning issue. To answer the question as to why we got a lower number of successful projects through the latest RESS auction, the main reason is that we have not got anything through planning so there are no projects ready to go into an auction process. As soon as they come through, it will happen. The whole idea with these auctions is to have them regularly so we reduce the capital risk and, therefore, reduce the cost. I am confident that as soon as we get projects through the planning system, we will get them into an auction system. That is probably the first and most critical key constraint.

There is also a grid constraint. We have a real challenge in both the ESB and EirGrid in being able to scale up the level of grid upgrades that are needed. It is huge and unprecedented, both in terms of connecting to offshore wind and the major transmission upgrades going right down to the local level. The ESB has a very good plan where it is looking at local 10 kV substations to put in battery storage so we get local flexibility and the capability of having an adaptive grid.

I think both the ESB and EirGrid are on the right track for shaping our electricity future and their plan for the future design of the grid is the right one. They have optimised a lot of the existing grid. For example, with offshore, rather than it being developer-led, where we just chase wherever developers think they want to put in the wind farms, we instead used the designated maritime area plan, DMAP, process to say that they will bid in a certain area because that is where we can optimise the grid and reduce the amount of onshore grid reinforcement that we have to do. Similarly, they are shaping our electricity future by looking at the midlands as a potential location, particularly where we might look at hubs where we put together very efficient use of energy systems, thereby putting the use close to the renewable source and close to the grid. In shaping our electricity future, the ESB strategies are the right ones. However, everyone in the industry and elsewhere would admit that it needs to accelerate.

The third thing that needs to accelerate within our Department concerns the policy areas. We have done some very good policy work recently; the energy security package that we delivered two weeks ago was first class and it is similar with the hydrogen strategy, and so on. I constantly say to civil servants that, having delivered that, we now need to deliver the next thing, and the two on the top of my list would be storage and private wires. I know some people are critical and sceptical of private wires; they say it has never been done that way and they ask why we would change our ways. One of the reasons I am keen to do it is due to the scale of renewables that we need. I think we could quite quickly ramp up both storage and renewables generation close to industry, which would help to embed industry here and be part of a balancing system. Within our Department, I think those two policy areas are two of the clear priorities that we need to develop and deliver. I accept that is not a complete answer to the Deputy’s question.

I will point to one thing that we have learned from the offshore auctions. I think we got the offshore auctions right in terms of the price, given the inflation that existed in the market and the uncertainty. We have seen our neighbours in the UK not getting an auction out.

On the other side of the Atlantic, New York, which is quite similar to us, is getting auctions through but the projects are unlikely to be built. Our projects will be built, subject to planning timelines. Part of the reason for that is we took on the risk of the curtailment and constraint. That risk lies better with the State than with the developer. The question now for the State is how we use the approximately 13 TW hours of surplus renewable electricity we will have by the end of the decade. That is an industrial policy issue in terms of how we create the flexibility in our pricing and market systems to use that power. We can do it. It is technical, but it is the centre of the revolution.