Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Deputy Jan O'Sullivan that this is an area where things keep changing. It is full of uncertainties. I commend Deputy Stanley on his Bill and I understand that his motives are right and while there are many elements of it that I support, I cannot support the Bill. I will explain in detail the reason.

The one thing that is fixed is the physical atmosphere we operate in and the absolute certainty around climate science that it presents a real threat to all our people and we must respond to it. In my reading of the Paris climate agreement and all the analysis of the scientific recommendations, if a country such as Ireland is to take this seriously we have to have a 100% decarbonised energy system in the next three decades or so. I would even go more quickly but we are aiming for 2050. That is what we signed up to. It is not spelt out that this is Ireland's obligation. It is not coming from the EU but from an agreement we were party to and rightly so. Is there an understanding that we have agreed to do this? It is an incredible goal to try to achieve, to remove fossil fuels from transport, heating and power generation. That is what we have to do. The scale of the transformation is huge.

I would set us on course to do it both because it is the right thing to do for the future of our people and because it sets us up for a new economy from which this country will benefit. A brilliant Irishwoman, Marie Donnelly, who is head of the European Commission's renewables section, spoke recently here in the Oireachtas audiovisual centre. She made the simple point of asking why would Ireland, the country that missed out on the first industrial revolution, look to miss out on this new industrial revolution. That is what it is. Renewables are winning. It is game over. They are winning in China and in America, no matter what Donald Trump says. They are now the mainstay of new electricity generation. In Europe last year I think approximately 85% of all new power generation was renewable. The same is true of electric vehicles and the development of efficiency technologies. That is where all the economic development and opportunities are going. For us to opt out would be to miss an incredible economic opportunity.

I do not believe we can do oil, coal or gas. There is no working technology for storage of carbon. Some of the modelling from UCC and others, Irish energy associations and so on talk about storing carbon but there is no working or economic model for that. We have to stop burning fossil fuels quickly. I heard Deputy Stanley say that Bord na Móna had launched its "naturally driven" campaign at the National Ploughing Championships a couple of days ago. Nothing Bord na Móna is doing at present deserves to be called "naturally driven". It cannot go out and buy up hardwood wild natural forests in Georgia, slash them, bring the wood over here and call it "naturally" anything. It is a completely unsustainable model. I have changed my view on that. Ten years ago I might have thought maybe we could do something with biomass but we found out that the land use issue in that regard means we cannot do that. We cannot go out and hold our head up high by chopping down other countries' forests and shipping them over here. Two thirds of the energy goes as waste heat up a chimney. That is not a viable solution. Bord na Móna is looking for the Government to invest some of the national strategic investment fund in it. If the Government invests in that I am sorry to say our credentials would be shot. They are already in sufficient difficulty internationally. We cannot go down that route.

I would love to see us take up ocean energy but that is a 20:1 bet and a 20:1 time horizon at best. There is no working wave device, even among the best tidal power companies in the world. We do not have a big tidal resource. I would love to think, as Deputy Jan O'Sullivan does, that hydro energy is available to us but we have used up most of the big resources there. Even with hydro energy there are environmental problems. That is not somewhere we can turn.

We can turn to a mixture of wind and solar development, particularly offshore wind, and interconnection. This new electricity system will work by an incredible complex balancing system, which the EU is getting ready to legislate for at the moment. This will be done on a regional basis, not just us with the United Kingdom, but with the UK and France and Denmark and Belgium and Norway in a north-west European grid which balances the variable supply and demand. Interconnection is key. We cannot cut ourselves off as an island and think we could be energy efficient. Deputy Stanley should note that were we to do that, it would make us incredibly expensive because there has to be an expensive back-up system. The better, cheaper back-up system is for us to connect with our neighbours and be part of this new evolving system. That is the primary reason why I cannot support the Bill. Section 2 states we must be energy self-sufficient first but that is not the clever way to go. We have enough difficulties without the North-South interconnector and cutting ourselves off from the North and the problem with Brexit. We cannot think we can double down on that and cut ourselves off. I have considered this in real detail and it is not the correct economic approach. That is my main concern in respect of this Bill.

I listened to the Deputies who reflected concerns outside here and we do have to be absolutely attentive to the concerns of communities in regard to the development of wind power. There are many complicated questions around that. We have learnt in recent years that small scale wind turbines do not work. We thought some years ago that micro turbines would work but there is no evidence for that yet. Maybe somebody will develop new technology for them but they are not economic. Do we want a large number of small turbines or a small number of large ones?

Where we should go next is a massive offshore campaign. What has happened to offshore wind in the past two or three years is dramatic. Three years ago the price of offshore wind would have been around 15 cent per kW/h. Because of a new bidding system adopted by the Dutch, the Danes and even the British, the price of offshore wind this year is down to 60 cent per kW/h. It is cheaper than any other potential supply. Some people suggest nuclear energy but that is two or three times that price and we do not want these massive power stations. We need to move towards flexible, variable supplies. We should go towards offshore wind and massively towards solar energy, particularly solar panels on roofs so that we get it in the ownership of people, not necessarily of the big corporations. We have to make a conscious significant switch towards it being owned locally and I agree with those who spoke earlier about that. The Government should be proactive in that.

On using semi-State companies, during the Green Party's time in government we had a massive programme of expansion of Bord Gais as well as ESB, Coilte and Bord na Móna into renewables. Some outside said we should not have four State companies doing it. To my mind, the more the better and the more State ownership the better. I regret that policy was stopped when Bord Gais energy assets were sold off. We could return to that.

We need to go to energy co-operatives not only in the 20% provision, which I welcome although one could look at a higher figure of 30%, but we ought actively to support energy co-operatives that are supply companies as well as generation companies, such as Ecopower in the Flemish part of Belgium, which is doing a balancing act between variable supply and variable demand. There could be co-operatives where people who live close to power stations would get their electricity at very cheap prices to run electric vehicles, so one would run one's car off the local turbine and get cheap prices for the heat pump system that we can use to electrify our heating systems. We should have the sort of emphasis which the Tipperary Energy Agency has in supporting not only the generation of ownership but also the retrofitting of houses, the electrification of transport and heat, the consumer being involved in owning part of the generation but also benefitting from all the new sophisticated energy supply and demand management mechanisms, which we should look at so they are the best they can be.

Yes, we need to stop flicker. That can be done by stopping the turbines when the sun is at a certain height. We need to be conscious of noise issues and setback issues. If we are not going to do that with wind and solar interconnection, how are we going to power our country in a way that is carbon neutral, that is responsible and sees us at the forefront of the industrial revolution taking place rather than holding back?

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