Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Durkan is aware, responsibility for national and international climate change policy is a matter for the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government. However, the overarching objective of the Government's energy policy is to ensure secure and sustainable supplies of competitively priced energy to all consumers. Ireland is currently heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels to meet its energy needs.

While it is acknowledged that fossil fuels will remain part of the energy mix for some time to come, progress is being made towards increasing the share of renewables in our overall energy requirements. The 2009 EU renewable energy directive set Ireland a legally binding target of meeting 16% of our energy requirements from renewable sources by 2020. In order to meet this target, Ireland is committed to meeting 40% of electricity demand from renewable sources. Provisional figures for 2012 indicate that 19.6% of electricity demand was met from such sources.

Wind energy has been the largest driver of growth in renewable electricity to date, contributing most towards the achievement of the 2020 target. In 2012, 15.3% of Ireland's electricity demand was met by wind enegy generation. At the end of the third quarter this year, the total amount of renewable energy generated connected to the grid was approximately 2,100 MW. It is estimated that a total of between 3,500 MW and 4,000 MW of onshore renewable energy generation capacity will be required to allow Ireland to meet its 40% renewable electricity target. Currently, projects involving approximately 3,000 MW of renewable energy have taken up connection offers under the Gate 3 grid connection programme.

A failure to meet our overall EU renewable energy targets would result in compliance costs and emissions permit purchases. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland has estimated that these could amount to around €100 million to €150 million per annum for each percentage point of the shortfall in renewable energy targets and a further €250 million in emissions permit purchases.

The development of the clean, indigenous, renewable energy resources which Ireland is fortunate to have in abundance holds the prospect of reducing our reliance on expensive fossil fuel imports, thereby improving our energy security and opening up opportunities for the engineering, ICT and communications sectors, with consequent potential for job creation. In response to Deputy Durkan's question about the economic impact, the potential is already recognised by IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland in their clean technologies strategies. As we look towards a new EU energy and climate change framework for 2030, we need to expand the portfolio of renewable energy generation options.

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