Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Bruton. There is an irony in how many young people live their lives these days. They have no problem going online and ordering a pair of jeans manufactured in China or Asia which have to make four or five stops before being courier-delivered to their door. However, the people who are prepared to shop like this are increasingly discouraged from travelling because of carbon shaming and the feeling that if they go on holidays, they are also a cause of the global warming phenomenon. That has become a trend. Aviation has responded and in the last years large aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus have gone into the exploration of hydrogen fuel and are now launching flights.

This is very much where the sector is moving, and Ireland needs to position itself as a country that can really tap into this. It will be a pioneering phase of global aviation, guided by the right and just principles associated with trying to save our planet and cut down on carbon emissions from international travel.

A major development to be considered in Ireland, which I do not believe has been properly considered by the Government and its agencies yet, is the Green Atlantic wind farm off the wild Atlantic coast, or off the coast of Clare. It is an offshore wind farm that will bring electricity onshore at the site of the former Moneypoint coal-burning power station. It is a massive project. It is the biggest wind energy project to be committed to in Ireland and one of the largest in Europe. The most interesting aspect, on which construction has already started, is a synchronous compensator. The cost is to be €50 million. Everyone who understands wind energy knows that when electricity is generated by wind, it cannot be stored. If it is not used on the grid, it has to be grounded. Every week, electricity worth millions of euro is grounded into the earth unused. At Moneypoint, the electricity generated offshore will be brought to the sink compensator and stored as hydrogen, which can be used in many facets.

This morning, another hydrogen vehicle was trialled in the streets of Dublin. Aviation is very quickly moving in this direction. Further into the Shannon Estuary, about 15 or 16 nautical miles from Moneypoint, is Shannon Airport, where there is the capacity to store 33,000 metric tonnes of aviation fuel at any given time. Shannon Airport and its fuel farm, with its capacity, have great potential to be the stopping point for aircraft coming in from the United States and passing over from Europe. When aircraft first convert to hydrogen fuel, which will happen in the next decade or so, they will not have the same capacity as on avgas. They will have to touch down, refuel and take off again. This is far more environmentally friendly, and we are positioned geographically as the unique stepping stone between the continents of North America and Europe. It is an opportunity that has not yet been explored properly to any great extent from an Irish perspective.

The wind energy guidelines are grossly outdated. They are 16 years old. On the eve of the last general election, the previous Government had a set of brand new draft guidelines that were to be signed off on. Along came an election, Covid and a host of other issues and they seem to have got buried. Those in the industry who want to build wind facilities and see more of them say the guidelines are totally outdated and do not reflect what they have in their workshops and want to construct, and those who live in communities surrounded by wind farms say the protective measures of the guidelines, relating to setback distance, flicker effect and such matters, do not give sufficient protection. Therefore, it is lose–lose at the moment. If we are serious as a country about greening our economy and grasping renewable energy, we should have a current, modern set of guidelines related to wind energy production.

Many believe Moneypoint is closed but it still has coal-burning and electricity-generating capacity. In a time of national fuel and energy crises, it makes sense for us to continue to use power stations like Moneypoint to fuel up and ensure that our country is lit up by night and that we have a sufficient supply of domestically generated electricity. We have an east–west interconnector. In Ireland, we are choosing to move away from fossil fuels, and rightly so. I am not saying we should not, because we all want to get to that point, but that we should relinquish fuels only when we have developed replacement capacity through renewables. Every time we buy electricity on the east–west interconnector, it comes from power stations in Britain, three of which, including Drax, produce electricity by burning coal. If we are talking about global warming and a global problem, we are only putting our heads in the sand if we believe that by shutting down our facilities and buying from Britain, we have solved the problem. I ask for a more holistic approach to this over the next two or three years. When we have the offshore capacity, which is coming, we can then shut things down.

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