Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy
Climate Change Targets 2026-2030: Electricity Sector
2:00 am
Dr. Liam Ryan:
When we see the flow on the interconnector, we are importing based on lower prices from the UK than we are seeing in Ireland. From a market perspective, the price has been set in the wholesale electricity market generally by gas generators happening on the system. In real time, we are seeing that at times, we need to keep five units on the system to make sure we have stability. We are targeting to try to reduce the number of conventional units we have on the system. From a European perspective, when we look at the prioritisation, the interconnector is a higher priority than national renewables. This is a change to European policy if we wanted to do something different in that region. In essence, we are trying to increase the amount of renewables on the system by increasing non-synchronous generation such as wind and solar that we can potentially operate going from 75% to much higher than that. That actually helps. I hope that answers the question.
No comments