Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State did not say that it increases security. The Government is moving away from Russian gas and going to America and wants to frack gas, which is twice as damaging. It is a scientific fact that US gas is fracked gas. It releases more than twice the amount of methane than conventional gas, which comes from Russia which is already more damaging to global warming than coal.

11 o’clock

This is nuts. It is not going in the right direction in terms of climate change. There is no evidence that this is a good climate action decision. Royal Dutch Shell invented the idea of natural gas as a bridge fuel in 2001. We are still talking about it 20 years later. The reality is that over a 20-year period, liquid natural gas is dirtier than coal and diesel oil in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy produced. This is because of the unburned methane that is released through the extraction, processing, transport, storage and combustion of that gas. I have been looking at stuff from Cornell University, which is one of the leaders in this field. It has pointed out that "reducing methane is absolutely key to meeting" the UN COP21 targets.

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