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

The sustainable energy communities, of which there are some 750, are really important. They are very strong on retrofitting and they need to be strong on self-generation as well. Combining supply companies and generators is one of the examples from Europe we should be encouraging. The SEAI has a critical role in this regard. We need to de-risk a lot of the investment to the community sector. That does not mean waiting until every single risk is gone; it means the State must take on the risk and must ensure, in our regional, local authority and other development plans, that we provide for community energy projects and make sure they are not last in any grid deployment process. A whole variety of different work needs to be done by the regulator, the grid company and the SEAI to enable us to be faster, more flexible and more supportive of community power generation development. This project will start to make that feasible because there will no longer be the really complicated auction system. People know they will get up to 5 MW through if the grid, grant and other elements are sorted. It will be up to the State, through EirGrid and the SEAI, to make sure that happens.

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