Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I will direct questions to each witness, starting with Mr. Collins. First, there needs to be an understanding of where the environmental community is coming from on the issue of banning exploration. After almost 50 years, we have learned that the culture change which Mr. Allen is seeking is a difficult one. Rather than us always putting the attention on the individual, is the Department using the right approach? People like Mr. Bill McKibben and 350.org have shifted the way the environmental community sees this. We have to stop the problem at source. Rather than putting all the emphasis on the consumer, we need to stop it at the well head, the coal mine and the gas field. We do not see emissions as Irish emissions or American emissions. Regardless of from where the emissions come, they all go into the one atmosphere and remain there for hundreds of years.

If we can achieve an end to exploration here, it will have a real effect in that there will be no emissions therefrom going up into our collective atmosphere. Whether this accrues to Ireland in an accounting exercise within the European Union or otherwise, is a separate issue. The primary concern is stopping the emissions. It is global emissions and real emissions that we are interested in. This makes sense for a country regardless of the accounting issue. Owing to the approach we have taken of trying to have Ireland exempted, the Climate Action Network, Europe and others are citing Ireland as the second worst, only beaten by Poland, in terms of our policy approach. This is not an insignificant cost to this country in reputation. The argument is that this will not affect Irish emissions. It will affect the world's emissions and that is what is important. This is what we need to address and change.

Second, in terms of ongoing demand, I understand we have just agreed in Council and the trilogue process to an increase in the mandatory European energy efficiency target to 32.5%, with the prospect of a further increase in 2023. My understanding - I am going back a couple of years in this regard - is that the EU energy efficiency target had been set at 30%. I recall it being stated in a Commission paper that if we achieved that, gas demand in Europe would decrease by 23% to 35%%, which is lower than the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas, ENTSOG, targets or expected ongoing business-as-usual increase in production. If our European targets on efficiency are to mean anything, surely it should be a reduction rather than an ever increasing demand in gas supply.

My third point is a specific criticism, which I cited at our last meeting and will repeat now. If the Department's policy is based on the UCC modelling, I fundamentally disagree with those assumptions but that is not an argument to maintain exploration. I have said this to the excellent academics in UCC. I have no disagreement with their capability and intentions but I do not agree with them that we will see a world in 2050 where burning biomass for power generation is a viable sustainable or economic solution. I would love to hear from Mr. Collins how he thinks this might work. Are we, as seems to be the plan of Bord na Móna, to buy up Florida native forest, ship it here and burn it and watch two thirds of the waste energy go up a chimney and then do CCS on top of it? That is an incredibly expensive form of CCS.

Even if CCS is viable and it is possible to do it at Kinsale gas field, shipping over a forest from Florida to burn it and waste two thirds of the heat and then attach CCS to it is never going to be economic. The environmental community is never going to accept it because as stated earlier by one of the witnesses, the amount of land we would require to power our future by burning biomass for power generation is plain unsustainable. To my mind, it is never going to happen. If it is happening, as I said earlier, the EPA projections show our fanatical plan to keep burning peat, while throwing in a bit of biomass and claiming this as a sustainable future, increases our emissions, as well as providing for a huge direct cost to the Irish people. I fundamentally disagree with the UCC analysis that CCS or CCS and biomass will be a viable alternative. I ask Mr. Collins to outline how he thinks this is going to work? How are we going to be burning biomass in a way that is sustainable in the future?

As the SEAI mentioned statistics I do not think are in the written presentation, I ask Mr. Scheer to repeat them. If I understood him correctly, he said that the current analysis is that even with existing measures and the burning of peat, we would be short 47 million tonnes in terms of our 2030 target. This is before the 2030 target increases again, which will be the case following the agreement to raise the EU ambition agreed in the Council and trilogue process. This means even before that increased ambition, which we know is coming, we are already 47 million tonnes shy, if I heard Mr. Scheer correctly. He also said that the national development plan might help in this regard in terms of the commitments regarding the retrofit of 45,000 homes and on electric vehicles Who is doing the analysis as to what the additional savings might be and does Mr. Scheer have a rough estimate of that saving? Why do we put together a national development without factoring in the carbon consequences of it? How is it that that plan was signed off before we worked out what the carbon consequences would be? What sort of planning is that? Mr. Scheer might elaborate on who is in charge of that analysis and when it will be published. If he does not know the answers to those questions, of whom should I ask them? This new climate committee is tasked with considering this issue. How do we find out, before going into the new committee that is being set up, what those measures and figures are?

My next question is to the witness from Ervia. If we are going to have 20% renewable gas in our network by 2030, where will it come from and how much of it is expected to come from grass rather than waste products? I am very supportive of the switch to anaerobic digestion for gas and similarly from food waste to other waste sources. How much of the 20% mentioned comes from waste and how much comes from grass? I am conscious that we cannot feed our cattle at present and must import fodder to feed our national herd. I would be slightly nervous if we are projecting that all that grass be used to go up a power station chimney rather than to feed our animals, which we are currently unable to do.

Why did Ervia increase its network in the midlands recently? Can I see a copy of the economic analysis that showed the case for expansion of the gas network at a time when everything indicates we should be contracting and managing our contraction of our fossil fuel system and fossil fuel use? What was the expansion of our gas network recently and where can I see the analysis of that in terms of cost benefit on the investment decision? I understood from previous experience that Ervia had gone to all of the big energy users and there was no big demand source for gas and so I was surprised when I heard it was expanding its network. I thought those days were over.