Mr. James Scheer:

Three or four were to me. The Chairman asked about the University of Manchester study. It was a good example of another scenario that considered the EU budget flowing from Paris. Its conclusions about the substantial use of fossil fuels beyond 2035 not being consistent with the commitment are strong. I agree with that, and we are not discussing long-term substantial use. In everything we are saying, the UCC scenarios that are relevant for Ireland and all of the long-term trajectories, gas reduces to a low proportion of demand. That is combined with those kinds of technology that are on trial and of which there are some working examples, but that are more expensive and challenging. However, there are opportunities for them in Ireland. We need to consider the local situation.

The SEAI is 100% behind a 100% renewable future. Right now, it is a question of how to transition to that with our current technologies.

I mentioned an important point in my opening statement. A future with any fossil fuel in it - Mr. Allen talked about the important role of gas in his 100% renewable scenario - will concurrently require significant increases in the efficiency of renewable energies. If we do not do that, all of the scenarios will need to be rerun. As the transition from fossil fuels rushes towards us, we will quickly need to shift to, for example, negative emission technologies. However, such technologies are not necessarily proven and are expensive. The "no regrets" options are to go long on renewables and efficiencies now while acknowledging that gas is required to support a high level of renewables penetration, for example, in our electricity grid, to reduce the emissions factor for electricity, and to decarbonise heat where gas is used for that purpose in homes and businesses. There are probably thousands of ways to stay within a carbon budget. In our existing system, gas plays an important role and can play a role in the future, but only if we focus on efficiencies and renewables now and in the medium term.

That probably segues into Deputy Smith's question. It is not an official SEAI board position, in that I did not get the paper or a position from the board. Rather than opposing the Bill, the focus in our recommendation was on including some flexibility. There has been much debate about various sources of gas for the future, be it the UK and the North Sea or elsewhere - they are likely to shift further and further east - and including liquefied natural gas, LNG, in the mix. The UK has increasing levels of LNG. The line of argument in our recommendation, which is consistent with the SEAI's stand on a transition to a sustainable energy future, is that we should not get locked into a future in which we have to import gas from a country that is using gas with a greater carbon footprint than gas we might be able to source locally.

Deputy Ryan asked about the targets. I can respond from a modelling perspective. The SEAI does not make policy. Rather, we conduct analysis based on evidence and feed that into the Department so that it can make policy.

We pass on our energy projections to the EPA. They put it through their sheets and come out with the emissions projections and they combine that with agriculture to show us how we are going. The latest set of projections show that shortfall to the 2030 point-in-time target for the EU, which was only set for Ireland and agreed at EU level recently. In response to that what is seen is, and the Deputy has been involved in the process, an immediate response from Government in terms of announcing a range of new and enhanced policy measures. That is not inconsistent with the shift to a sustainable energy future. In that context, there are lots of moving parts in the modelling. What we have seen in the context of the economic recovery until quite recently was a prolonged period of low fossil fuel prices and a big increase in the projections for energy demand in the country. This will make our targets more challenging, given that there will be more demand for renewables and more carbon will have to be taken out of the system. We work very closely with the Department via our own modelling capacity to illustrate where we might go with the current rate of assumptions around the macroeconomy, with the current fuel prices and with the current suite of policies and measures that are announced and we do scenario testing to check how those projections might vary for different ranges of ambition. There is a question of timing in terms of when targets are announced, how things are modelled and all of that and ultimately we could be well in front of the game in anticipating a target from Europe and we could model how we will get there. We do not do that ourselves necessarily, we do the policy bottom up type modelling but the UCC-type modelling, which is the optimisation of the whole system and how we hit those long term targets, is also part of the decision-making process that the Department enters into and hosts. A technical research and modelling group is the clearing house for much of the research and modelling that is going on in this area. That is hosted by the Department and other members on that group include the EPA, ESRI, ourselves, the Departments of Finance, Taoiseach, Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Public Expenditure and Reform and Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Teagasc and analysts such as UCC and UCD. What we are essentially doing there as a group is modelling where we think we are at and where we are going, where we need to be, what the gaps are, and getting a much better of those and feeding all that back to the decision makers for that next push. We work closely with that interdepartmental group.