Mr. Kevin Brady:

The Senator's first question was about the compatibility of connectors. The Tesla chargers are a private network for Tesla owners only. One unfortunately has to buy a Tesla vehicle to use them. The ESB has upgraded all of their network fast chargers and all of the new fast chargers under the climate action plan will have both fittings, the first of which is called CHAdeMO - the Nissan Leaf is probably the most popular car which uses that, which is the Japanese standard - and second of which is the combined charging system, CCS, the new European standard that the majority of cars use. All of the new ESB chargers and the vast majority of the existing ones have been upgraded to this standard.

The second point that the Senator made related to the access card, ringing up and resetting, is an issue around the old infrastructure that is out there. I mentioned in my opening statement that the climate action plan funding of €10 million is not just about new fast chargers. The 250 existing standard green chargers that can be seen across the street are being replaced with blue ones with Project Ireland 2040 written on them. They are the high reliability models. We accept that the existing standard chargers have reliability issues, which is why they are all being replaced. The ESB has replaced approximately 50 of them and is proceeding quite well. Both an upgrade to make the network more reliable, and an expansion are taking place. It is happening now and it is getting better each and every day. I hope that those experiences will get much better.

The home charger costs between €350 and €400. The Government gives a grant of €600, which covers not only the purchase but the installation cost. We require a certified electrician to do it. The vast majority of grants are claiming the full €600. The prices we are seeing are in the order of €1,000, so on average we are giving over half of that. On the higher costs, without naming any electricity supply companies, some offer a service. Even though one may not trust or know someone who may do the installation, I suggest looking at the electricity supply companies, which are trusted, regulated entities, to see their offers. One applies for the grant but one should definitely not pay €3,000. There are options there to look at.

On ethanol volume increasing to 10%,there is an issue around indirect land use change. Ethanol, by a large, comes from feed or food-based crops. The issue is that if we take corn or wheat and make it into ethanol, if they are planted on land that is currently used for some other food production, that food or animal feed needs to be produced somewhere else. That might involve cutting down a forest to plant it or whatever it might be. If we take over more land for biofuels, the issue is whether this will have an indirect land use change that is bad for the environment. Based upon what we are at, Ireland will probably be limited from 2021 onwards to only allowing food or feed-based biofuels to account for 2% of our energy use. E10 would be close enough to that 2%. Going beyond that, it would have to be ethanol that is not produced from food or feed-based crops, which would be much more expensive option.

As someone said earlier, these issues are very much intertwined. Even though it sounds like a great idea to go beyond that, the other environmental impacts need to taken into account too. I caution against indirect land use change impacts and the potential higher increases.