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

I thank the Deputy. I understand he is primarily looking to discuss the use of HVO in the heating context and my comments may focus on that. Our climate action plan includes a range of measures to address the use of fossil fuel in heating systems in buildings and the national heat study contains the detailed analysis that is informing the development of options, policies and measures to decarbonise the heating and cooling sectors to 2050. The study considered a number of potential decarbonisation options for a wide range of dwelling and business types. This included the use of liquid biofuels such as hydrogenated vegetable oil, solid biomass, biogases and other technologies such as heat pumps and district heating systems.

The recommendation of the heat study is that heat pumps are the optimal decarbonisation path for heating systems, with district heating also being an option that can be widely deployed. There are, therefore, no current plans to provide supports for HVO in a heating context. In line with our climate action plan commitments, my Department is working on the development of a heat policy statement and a roadmap for the phase-out of fossil fuels in heating as part of the requirement to transition to zero-carbon heating by 2050 at the latest.

As the Deputy knows, there is a variety of different sectors that will seek to use HVO as a low-carbon solution. I expect it will have a significant role, particularly in hard-to-abate areas, in transport, data centres or other applications where we do not have any other easy zero-carbon alternative. We have that in the heating sector. HVO is quite a scarce resource. While the volume is not insignificant, it is a minute 1% or 2% of our overall fuel availability. It is right for us to target that scarce resource to sectors where it can have the most impact.

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