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

I absolutely agree with the Deputy and share his concern that some of the cooking oils or biofuels that are imported into Europe and claimed to be waste cooking oil may come from other sources. That is something we have to stamp out. That has to be done at European level because Europe has the competence and scale when it comes to the monitoring and enforcement of that. In addition, it is a European market it is coming into. It typically comes into Rotterdam; it does not come into Dublin. It comes in and is, so we are not the first point of contact. I agree that it is something we have to stop. That does not mean we do not use a volume of biofuels. There are real benefits. There is a benefit in terms of us converting waste products, such as tallow and other materials, here. These are being refined at, for example, Whitegate refinery, which, I think, is sustainable and beneficial. I will go back to it but it is a circular economy model. Turning waste into a useful energy resource makes a lot of sense. There will be some availability from bioethanol and from plant crops that do not have an impact on biodiversity-rich habitats. There will also be other sources such as biodiesel, rapeseed oil and so on. However, the volume will be limited.

To answer the Deputy's question directly, we are working with the European Commission on this. My understanding is that the original complaint was raised by the European Biofuel Board. Although the complaint may have been withdrawn, there are still investigations taking place. In particular, the European Commission is investigating instances where EU duties relating to biofuels from Indonesia are being circumvented as a result of those products being transported through China and Britain. This goes back to the point about there being different routes to market here.

I will make a broader point. Using biofuels for transport is better than using them for heating We have alternatives in heating but we do not have many alternatives in the area of transport, particularly the HGV sector. We should prioritise the biofuels we do have for the hard-to-reach and hard-to-abate sectors in transport. The ones that will be the most significant, difficult and challenging but most important will be in aviation and maritime which are at much earlier stages. The earlier stages in aviation will also be biofuels but again, because of the concerns raised by the Deputy and others, that is limited in capacity. The real strategic leap we have to make is towards synthetic biofuels and synthetic e-fuels, such as e-kerosene and other products. That is not impossible. It is technologically a combination of hydrogen and carbon so we could see where the source materials would come from.

We need to start thinking. What we can do is to convert our renewable surplus capability into some of those synthetic fuels to provide an alternative to biofuels. That will be much more sustainable long-term option.