Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPBES, reports leave us in no doubt about the twin climate and biodiversity crises we face and that we will have even more devastating consequences if urgent action is not taken now. Unfortunately, successive governments have failed to do enough in this area and, as a result, they have left us with a mountain to climb. While it will be a challenge to meet our carbon reduction targets, not doing enough now will result in a much higher environmental, social and financial cost in the future. With this in mind, this week has been extraordinary. Hearing a Green Party Minister go to bat for energy-sapping data centres and admit we will to have to keep power plants burning coal and oil for longer to avert blackouts due to the massive demand from those very data centres is a sorry state of affairs, to say the least.

Sinn Féin supports a moratorium on data centres. In our Powering Ireland 2030 document, published more than three years ago, we pointed to the need to manage demand and curtail the expansion of data centres. We highlighted data centres benefit from the current public service obligation, PSO, construct which is levied at peak demand but, of course, data centres have a gigantic but steady demand and so do better. We also highlighted data centres should be contributing to the development of wind power and grid upgrades here.

We have no data on whether these companies are building their own wind farms to power the data centres or just buying up wind farms that are built or are being built here. If a wind farm is built here, the intention is the energy from it will replace the fossil fuel electricity homes are currently using.

If, however, a data centre company comes in and buys up this wind farm to power itself solely, the houses for which that energy was intended will still be using electricity produced by fossil fuel power plants, thereby making our net national decarbonisation challenge even more difficult. This relates to the question of the net impact and the net effect.

Further to this, upgrades are needed for our electricity grid. This investment is needed to accommodate the electrification of our heating systems and cars, but also to manage our demand and supply. EirGrid, which is the semi-State company charged with this task, has failed in its duty to engage with communities to progress important grid works. It has failed to deliver necessary grid improvements. This has happened in communities that accept the need for grid improvements. I am thinking about the North-South interconnector, for example. These are communities that have shown a willingness to accept controversial infrastructure. We think of the tailings pond at Tara Mines in Baile Ghib, the County Meath Gaeltacht. The community accepts living with that infrastructure. EirGrid has taken an entirely different approach. It has sought to walk on communities. By doing that, it has managed to mobilise an entire region against necessary infrastructure. Based on the approach of rolling out the red carpet to international companies, I wonder what would happen if Facebook, Amazon, or Intel knocked on the door of EirGrid and said that they needed the North-South interconnector. I believe it surely would happen. That, for me is a real contrast.

I believe offshore wind will play a massive role in our climate ambitions. Again, I am concerned about the speed of progress in this area. Wind Energy Ireland published its first report earlier this month. It reported 12 months to deliver offshore wind energy. It identified seven urgent actions that the industry says need to be delivered by this time next year if 5,000 MW of wind energy is to be delivered in the coming years. These include fixing the foreshore licence system; providing more resources for relevant agencies; a timeline for renewable energy support scheme, RESS, auctions; progressing the maritime area planning Bill; establishing an offshore grid steering committee; strengthening our electricity grid; and developing our ports to ensure offshore can be built from our island.

There is a lot of work to be done in this area if we are to deliver 5,000 MW of offshore wind to transform our energy system. Wind Energy Ireland says that current projects are being delayed because the framework is not in place. It says that the 2030 targets are in danger of being missed because the framework is not in place. Some of that is on this Government. A lot of it is on previous governments. All of it points to years of inaction.

Sinn Féin has acknowledged the role of private companies in developing offshore, but we also want to see semi-States, such as the ESB and Bord na Móna, invest, develop and, importantly, retain ownership of renewable energy projects. It is essential that the State does not become as reliant on private renewable energy production as it has become on private fossil fuel energy production. The constant energy price hikes demonstrate how dependent and exposed the State is to volatility in the international energy markets and highlight the need to eliminate this threat going forward.

Microgeneration is another area in which the Government is slow and falling behind. Again, previous governments had lots of rhetoric, but took no action. This Government has lots of rhetoric and has taken some action, but it is still behind time and failing to deliver. It has been four years since Sinn Féin and Deputy Brian Stanley introduced our microgeneration support scheme Bill in the Dáil. Our Bill would have allowed households, community groups, farmers and businesses to make a significant contribution towards renewable energy production here, as well as to be rewarded for the excess energy that they produce. Four years later, we still have no Government scheme and the Government has missed its own summer 2021 target. On a regular basis, people who are early adopters contact me wondering where this Bill is. It is frustrating for those who invested early, as they were encouraged to do, but are not being compensated for the excess renewable electricity they contribute to the grid each day. We raised this as a priority question last week. I raised it with the Taoiseach yesterday. I ask the Minister when we will see that Bill.

Good quality public transport options will be key in the transport transition. Lower fares, increased capacity and new infrastructure all fall into this. We are all concerned to hear of the potential delays to important public transport projects, such as MetroLink and DART+. This is hugely disappointing news for those living on the proposed routes. It flies in the face of the rhetoric of getting people out of cars and into public transport. It raises the question: if these so-called priority projects are to be delayed beyond 2030, what will that mean for our targets? What will it mean for the type of transition we will be able to achieve before that date?

On electric vehicles, EVs, I welcome the provisional numbers from the Minister yesterday at the select committee showing that EVs now account for 15% of new registrations. Sales are up 226% year-on-year. However, we have a huge way to go to reach the EV target of 1 million vehicles by 2030. To reach this, we need to look at the EV grant scheme again. Analysis from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform suggests that subsidising 100,000 EVs using 2019 levels of support would cost the Exchequer between €965 million and €1.23 billion. That is an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money. It is therefore essential that this funding is targeted at those who need it. We neither want a situation where the taxpayer has funded EVs for people who did not need financial support, nor one where we have a concentration of EVs in an area where they are least required. Therefore, we need to think about and target in the best way that we can the issue of forced car ownership. There are huge swathes of this country where there is forced car ownership. On our current trajectory, we will end up directing our subsidies everywhere but those areas. That is policy incoherence. The Government should be looking at increasing EV grants for those on lower incomes. In addition, a grant for buying a second-hand EV should be introduced, as it was in France. The aim of such a grant would be to assist people with the higher cost of purchasing a second-hand EV and to encourage the purchase of new EVs by sellers. That would contribute to the overall transition to a cleaner road network.

Charging points are also a key area that needs to be radically addressed. We need thousands more public EV points to give consumers confidence that chargers will be available island-wide, to encourage the purchase of electric cars and to reassure people they will not be left stranded. The public charge point grant scheme has been in place since September 2019. It aims to provide local authorities with a grant of up to €5,000 to support the development of on-street public chargers. While applications from 13 local authorities have been received to date, no chargers have been installed under the scheme. This is simply not good enough. I speak with local authorities. They talk about a lack of capacity in local authorities and a lack of familiarity with the technology. They are looking for a county to take on a pilot scheme and to be a lead agency in the roll-out of the service. Maybe the Minister could look at that.

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