Mr. Cathal Lee:

The Deputy referred to families falling out of private rental accommodation or private ownership and having their incomes deemed by the State as falling into the fuel allowance category. In an ideal world, everyone would get to talk to one another, but the simplest way to begin was for EnergyCloud to work with the AHBs and local authorities because those organisations had direct relationships with the residents, which EnergyCloud did not. EnergyCloud is merely an enabler of that partnership.

The Deputy discussed scaling upwards and moving past local authority and AHB stock. Reverting to Mr. Mullins’s point, one would prioritise based on those the State had already determined were either in fuel poverty or at risk of it. This narrowness of focus is something that the committee should be considering in its engagement with the Department. One could then join the smart meter programme, an asset that the State has paid for, to the Department of Social Protection’s existing infrastructure for identifying families. There are many things that can be done in this regard.

I recall a conversation with another Member of the Oireachtas who asked what would happen if all the curtailment disappeared. I looked at the Member genuinely and asked whether the Member had not seen the climate action plan. We are going to triple our renewable energy asset in the next ten years. At the same time, we are changing how we live our lives in terms of heating, the electrification of heat, transport, etc. This is profoundly changing the volume of renewables required and the corresponding volume of waste that will have to be built into the system. That is the exciting bit – to reimagine waste as something. EnergyCloud was inspired by the founders of FoodCloud, who reimagined taking waste from the back of supermarkets, not allowing it to be put into a skip and saying that it should instead go to some good purpose. If you start from the proposition that that is not waste and it can lead to something positive or constructive, you can pursue ideas like those mentioned by Deputy Ó Laoghaire and Senator Wall, where you reimagine existing assets within the community as being large batteries that can receive energy. For example, there is a large concentration of wind farms in Deputy Ó Cuív’s area, but to be able to make the connection between the surplus from those wind farms and his community requires initiatives like EnergyCloud.