Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

Tá áthas orm deis a fháillabhairt ar an mBille Fuinnimh (Forálacha Ilghnéitheacha) 2006. Ba mhaith liom mo chuid ama a roinnt le mo chara, an Teachta Gogarty.

Is ceart féachaint siar agus ansin chun cinn. For many years, we have known about the limitations of the types of energy we use. Media reports date back decades and 1973 was the start of a real debate on the finite nature of the energy sources on which we depend. The significant increase in demand corresponds to some extent with population increases. Between 1860 and 1991, the world's population increased by a factor of four but the use of inanimate energy increased by a factor of 93. This is unsustainable and the issue must be dealt with.

It is neither popular nor politically expedient to set out all of the answers but it must be done. If this case is to be argued, skilful political debate is required because we are discussing the future well-being as well as the current well-being of people living on this planet. While the extraction of crude oil has doubled in each decade, the basic understanding of what needs to be done requires more education and energy literacy instead of technology. My colleague, Deputy Gogarty, is the Green Party's education spokesperson and has regularly spoken about literacy but energy literacy is not prominent in our education system. We are busy getting the other types of literacy up to standard. However, energy literacy is becoming more important.

This is a considerable issue. The earth is nearly 5 billion years old. In that time, solar energy has beamed down irrespective of whether it was used by or suited people when they came along. It has been trapped in some ideal conditions. Today, we use it as oil, coal and gas. Effectively, a large battery or storehouse of solar energy has beamed down over millions of years. If we believe we can replace this accumulated store of energy with oilseed rape, windmills or the other 21 types of renewable energy technology available, there is a fundamental mismatch in our mathematics. That intense energy, which we use as oil or kerosene to get large aeroplanes into the air, has accumulated over millions of years.

Unless we wait another several millions years for more to accumulate, we must change our way of living. However, we have engaged in an orgy of energy use. The fact that the energy was there and will remain for a time, albeit in increasingly small amounts, has produced an addiction to its consumption. We have taken it for granted. This is the problem that politics must face. Partly due to energy illiteracy, the denial of this addiction, which is known as agnosia in terms of people who suffer strokes but do not recognise their symptoms, is a problem.

We find ourselves listening to debates on nuclear energy and statements to the effect that it will still our addiction and help us along. However, the supply of uranium, on which nuclear energy depends, is also finite. People say that it can be reprocessed, but this leads to the additional problem of significant waste in liquid form. Not only the current generation must deal with it, as it has a half life of 250,000 years. What type of legacy is this? Where is the morality and what can be said to justify that legacy? It is deeply selfish to consider it as an option. It will not even address our energy needs in terms of transport, our fastest growing energy demand sector. Significant costs in terms of waste, security, construction, the transportation of nuclear material, decommissioning and insurance — as Deputy Dennehy mentioned, this might mean the cost of accidents such as occurred at Chernobyl — make this option unaffordable and immoral irrespective of its environmental impact or the effects of radiation, such as cancer.

We have a choice. Do we use money to go down that dangerous and expensive road or do we spend it more cost effectively on insulation? I am proud to say that my area's local authority has been leading the national debate on energy insulation and has doubled the number of new energy efficient houses in its development plan. It has passed the point that Sustainable Energy Ireland believed we could reach. I am beginning to sound like the introduction to a "Star Trek" film.

Fingal County Council is pushing the frontier in terms of energy insulation by requiring a 30% renewable energy component in new housing in Balbriggan north-west, Ballymun and other areas. The Minister has acknowledged this requirement, which should be replicated around the country. That is beginning to be the case but it should be done as the norm rather than as the exception. It highlights the fact that we must plan for a post-oil economy. For example, every roof space should have solar panels and every house should have maximum insulation.

The Bill addresses the powers of the Commission for Electricity Regulation, but that is only a small element in facing our energy challenges. The situation must change. It is interesting to read in New Scientist and other scientific journals that if we were to burn all of our current energy resources, there would be a climate change of disastrous proportions. It is not a matter of finding the last drop, as Deputy Dennehy said. From the points of view of world security and health we cannot afford to burn that last drop.

The Green Party has tried to get all parties to work in the same way as social partnership. This matter goes beyond the term of a single Government and ensures that we set ourselves the targets that 50% of all of our energy will be derived from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020, which could be made more achievable through reducing energy demands, and that we should be totally oil-free by 2050. As the situation will grow worse, I hope we do not wait that long before reaching that target. Sweden has aimed for 2020 in this respect.

These targets are not overly ambitious. Rather, we are trying to be realistic, pragmatic, scientific and responsible in our long-term planning. As a country we are becoming less competitive and one of the main reasons for this is our 90% dependency on imported energy. That has to change.

We cannot wait for the oil to run out. The permafrost in Siberia is melting, releasing enormous amounts of methane, which is 20% more powerful than carbon dioxide. The Gulf stream has slowed down by 30% in the past 50 years. The warning signs are already clear. We must create a solar society and communities where people walk and are not oil dependent. We must also develop clean energy sources, intermediate technologies during the transition from fossil fuel use and reusable energy resources.

The "waste to energy" tag is used in an attempt to sanitise incineration and make it more acceptable to people. However, people in the recycling industry are aghast that the tag is not challenged in trade description. If one was serious about generating energy from waste, one would re-use the material rather than burn it. Once it is burnt, it must be replaced. It takes twice as much energy to replace PET plastic, for example, as is generated from burning it. In that sense, one is wasting energy by burning waste material. It is a lazy, stone-age methodology and no matter how manybells, whistles or filters on an incinerator, it is essentially a method of waste disposal that should have gone out with the Ark. We must be serious about energy literacy so that we are not using terms like "waste to energy" when we mean "waste of energy" and that argument stands up to scrutiny.

While I appreciate that today we are dealing with the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, every Department must become involved in this area. The agriculture and education sectors, the health sector in terms of the energy we use in our hospitals, for example, will be affected by high energy costs. I urge the Minister to develop a cross-departmental approach, similar to what is happening in Sweden and, as a former Minister with responsibility for the environment to encourage all local authorities to adopt the same standards as those set by Fingal County Council.

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