Mr. Joe O'Carroll:

I will address some of the Acting Chairman's questions and Bill Sadlier will speak on the 2030 targets. It is worth drawing the attention of the committee to work that has been carried out by Stanford University called the Solutions Project. It has identified the pathway to 100% renewable energy for 139 countries around the globe, including Ireland. It has quantified some of the high level benefits of achieving the 100% renewable energy target. In terms of jobs, it identified the creation of 35,500 new permanent jobs to achieve 100% renewable energy, and it defines a permanent job as a job that will exist for more than 40 years. Leaving aside all the benefits from the job creation and the investment, it has quantified the health benefits alone as in excess of €10 billion per annum by lowering and removing air pollution resulting from fossil fuels. All of that can be achieved with no extra cost to the consumer. It is worth making the point that if there was a technology company in Palo Alto that provided us with an opportunity to create 35,500 permanent jobs and benefits in that order, every politician in the land would, quite rightly, have a pathway beaten to the door of that company. That is the scale of the opportunity we have. We wish to move away from talking about costs. The move to 100% renewable energy is a massive opportunity. Even outside the economic benefits it has huge social and environmental benefits.