Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputy Bannon.

The Copenhagen conference has taken on much more significance now that the White House has announced that President Obama and his Chinese counterpart will attend. More significantly, the White House has announced that President Obama will commit to reducing American greenhouse gas emissions to 17% of 2005 levels by 2020, to 30% by 2030, 42% by 2040 and a staggering 83% by 2050. As previous speakers stated, they are just commitments. As we are aware, in the past US commitments have been empty so we need to make them legal. They are still ambitious targets and I wonder if the Minister could adopt them for our country. I am sure they are realisable.

In looking through papers in preparation for the debate I came across a good document from the Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland with which the Minister is probably familiar, A Survey of Climate Change since the IPCC 4 - the survey of climate change since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007. The evidence presented in this report by Professor Ray Bates of UCD shows that the underlying trends are continuing - an increase in atmospheric CO2, an increase in global average temperatures and a rise in sea level, in addition to the natural cyclical changes and normal climate variation which superimpose short-term and regional variability on these trends. The report concludes that "global climate change is real and continuing at a steady pace". I suppose that is stating the obvious.

If one looks at our record since 1990, six of the ten warmest years on record in modern times have occurred since 1990. Weather stations across this island have reported a 0.72° centigrade increase in average temperature since 1980, a decrease in the number of frost days, a decrease in the length of the frost season, etc. This country has a major issue.

As someone who has always taken an interest in this area, who taught environmental science for eight years and who looked for scrubbers to be installed at Moneypoint - I am on record in the Seanad for doing so at a time when they could have been installed for approximately €40 million and now it will cost the ESB over €240 million - I do not see progress being made. For example, approximately a quarter of the wind energy is produced in the Kerry region. Even if there is a demand for wind energy, the grid does not have adequate capacity to take that energy from the Stacks Mountains. We are not realising the potential of wind energy generating capacity and that is obvious right across the country.

Our gate system is totally outdated as well. People with planning permission must wait for Gate 4. They are right to have a connection, whereas there are people on Gate 3 who are a long way from connecting into the grid and are ahead of them. The entire system must change. In addition, I am aware of two proposals by ESBI in Kerry to look at wave energy which are likely to be held up for four or five years in trying to get a foreshore licence.

We talk of green energy in this country but really we are not at the races. Much lip-service is being paid in this House to the issue, but if the Minister was out there on the ground he would see that, while progress has been made, we are not capitalising on capacity.

In the area of legislation, although Deputy McManus is not present, I compliment the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security. It provides an outline of what the Minister can do. If this were implemented, the Minister could put Ireland ahead of the rest of the world. This is one example of how an Oireachtas committee can be effective and come up with good solutions. This is an area of major possibilities. It is one in which we can lead the world, but we are just not doing so.

GE announced in August or September that it would look at offshore wind generation. It is looking at some place in Europe to design and manufacture turbines. At present, the Dutch make approximately €5 billion out of wind turbines. We make little out of wind technology because we do not manufacture them here. We must look at the broader issue as well. There is a great opportunity to get GE, for example, to set up here to design and manufacture its turbines in Ireland.

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