Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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51. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the modelling which underpins the national mitigation plan; the key assumptions regarding the use of biomass in power generation; and his views on the future of carbon capture and storage. [21887/17]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Minister recently described our climate ambition as economically reckless. I will throw his criticism back at him by asking where his economic analysis is. It is clear that we have no mitigation plan with which anyone agrees. The head of the climate advisory committee stated the plan lacked substance, analysis and detail, while the head of the Environmental Protection Agency described the plan in similar terms. Let us have a real economic debate on where we are going on climate. From where does the economic analysis and modelling underpinning the plan come?

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Part of the development of the national mitigation plan has been the preparation of robust technical, environmental and economic analysis to evaluate a variety of impacts of a range of different mitigation options.  Environmental analysis, through strategic environmental and appropriate assessments, is being carried out by RPS Group on behalf of my Department. In this context, the strategic environmental assessment environmental report and the appropriate assessment Natura impact statement were published for public consultation alongside the draft national mitigation plan.

My Department has been supported in the preparation of technical and economic analysis informing the draft plan by relevant Departments and State Agencies, in addition to experts contracted by my Department for this work. A key focus of this work has been to prepare a series of greenhouse gas mitigation options using broadly comparable criteria for assessing their possible costs and benefits within the framework of the public expenditure code published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

The draft national mitigation plan is also underpinned by the official inventories and projections of greenhouse gas emissions for Ireland, which are prepared and published annually by the Environmental Protection Agency.

These data underpin the draft plan's assessment of the gap to meeting our targets for 2020 for the sectors of the economy outside the emissions trading system as well as the potential emissions reduction requirements arising from the European Commission's draft effort sharing regulation proposal for 2030. The EPA published updated inventories and projections data on 13 April and I intend that these will be reflected in the assessments contained in the final mitigation plan.

The draft plan notes the role of peat in power generation. While it is recognised that Ireland's limited biomass resource would be more efficiently deployed in the heating sector in the long term, the use of biomass in peat stations will help to meet Ireland's renewable energy target and reduce carbon emissions in the sector. Support is available under REFIT 3 for biomass technologies, including the co-firing of biomass at three peat power stations. Bord na Móna has stated that it intends to cease the harvesting of peat for electricity generation by 2030.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

The company has committed to replacing large-scale peat production with alternative indigenous energy sources such as biomass. In keeping with the energy White Paper, this will contribute to the decarbonisation of electricity while also helping to maintain sustainable levels of employment in the midlands.

Carbon capture storage, CCS, as a bridging solution is compatible with the move to decarbonisation of power generation, allowing a reduction of emissions during the transition. While research at a global level remains ongoing though, the commercial realisation of CCS technology has been limited to date. Officials in my Department have also met Ervia, the parent company of Gas Networks Ireland, to discuss the potential for CCS in Ireland.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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By 2030, the balance of peat will have been burned and we will have lost the carbon store. Where is the Minister's economic analysis? Am I to take from his response that the economic analysis is being provided by the RPS Group or, as mentioned in the middle of his response, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform? Let us have this debate. I will bring out Lord Nicholas Stern and his economic analysis, the World Economic Forum and the International Energy Agency to back up the case for ambition on climate change. Who is it in government or the public service - and why - that is opposed to any ambition on climate issues? Where is the economic argument that this will make sense for our country? Where is the economic analysis telling us that delaying for ten years while other countries get ahead in terms of economic opportunities is the right thing to do? That is what is happening. I want to see the economic analysis that underpins the Minister's lack of ambition, and then I will bring my list of people with this economic thinking to show why ambition makes sense when it comes to tackling climate change.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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We are speaking from the same hymn sheet. The Deputy is right, in that a great deal of expert advice is available to us. We must utilise it to make the economic arguments. As I told Deputy Smyth, this is not just a question of considering the long term, given that there are short-term wins for everyone in respect of air quality, which has a direct impact on our health services. A whole-of-Government approach is needed, not just an examination of the long-term economic impact.

A part of the problem that we are examining in the context of the mitigation plan is that the analysis being used by the Government in terms of capital investment in this field does not accurately reflect the challenges being faced. We are considering how to revise that. Deputy Smyth cited the penalties that we will face by 2030, somewhere between €3.5 billion and €5.5 billion, but I do not envisage that we should be looking at that.

Deputy Eamon Ryan is correct that there are huge economic opportunities for Ireland in this regard. We have unique offerings that we must exploit. We need the support of every economic skill available to us inside and outside Government to make that argument.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I agree with the Minister, but the cost benefit analyses within the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are out of date and at fault. We need a whole-of-Government approach, but if the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport does not seem to have the slightest interest and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine wants to be counted out, we have a problem. If so, why is the Minister playing this as a question of ambition being the problem? In response to criticisms of the national mitigation plan, why did he claim that our ambition and economic analysis were the core of the problem when the core is actually in the heart of Government, the public service and Departments that do not care about climate change and do not see it as an opportunity for this country to modernise and lead? Surely that is what we need to draw attention to, not an excess of ambition in government, but a lack thereof. That is the core of the problem and must change, starting with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and its economic analysis, with which I have fundamentally disagreed over the years.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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No, my criticism related to the 2020 targets to which we signed up, in that we did not have the economic analysis that should have been available to us. The Commission has since held up its hands and said that the realistic cost-effective target that should have been set for us was 7%, not 20%, but that is irrelevant at this stage. It is in the past, and we have those targets now. We must try to get as close to them as possible and ensure that we have targets that we can achieve by 2030.

A large challenge lies ahead. The Deputy is right, in that, as the Minister in charge, I must have the economic facts and figures in order to make the case. The systems in government need to be reformed to reflect that. I need everyone's support if that is to be done. I have spoken with the Climate Change Advisory Council on this matter. There is much expertise inside and outside the council. I have told NGOs and the like that I need support. We need to test the robustness of the case, which will be done in-house and externally, but we all need to work together and make the economic case that justifies this level of spending, not just in the long term, but in the short term as regards air quality. One in five children in this country suffers from asthma and there are four deaths per day as a result of poor air quality. We can deal with the challenges of today, not just the long term, by making an investment in this area.