Results 361-380 of 40,868 for speaker:Simon Coveney

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I do not agree with that. It has not been.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: Can I answer that?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I hear the Deputy on that, although I think she is making the assumption that all of these wind farms will be built anyway and instead of them powering houses and other parts of our economy, they are powering data centres. The truth is that many wind projects are being funded by companies that want to decarbonise the powering of their data centres. Many of the renewable projects happening...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: There will be many more than 60 or 70 turbines off the east coast of Ireland over the next few years.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: That is why we have a licensing system and planning system to be able to do that and make sure they are happening in the right place, that they have the appropriate grid connections and so on.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: However, as the Deputy knows, many of the land-based wind projects happening around the country are funded by companies looking to move away from a reliance on carbon-based fuels to renewable energies. That will happen both offshore and onshore. Whether it is off the coast of Wicklow or Cork, we will see that. I do not see that as a bad thing; rather, I see it as an industry building to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: On the last bit first, on reporting requirements, this is happening. At a European level, there is a reporting obligation. We are going to move to a point where, effectively, companies will have to provide their sustainability credentials each year in the same way they have to provide their annual financial returns. We will be starting this process with larger companies and then moving to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: Well-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I have to say I visit building sites to see whether there is really change happening on those sites, and it is.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I was on a building site in Cobh recently where houses were being built with a material I had never seen before. It is providing extraordinary improvements in terms of heat and energy management once the homes have been built. I think this is happening now and our job is to accelerate it further and, basically, to make it the norm. If we need to look at new incentives and new grant aid...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I am not sure I mentioned carbon abatement at all. Did I?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: What I mean by that is emissions reductions, basically. It is about moving away from industries, sectors and practices that produce carbon emissions. If we can replace them with alternative materials, fuels and approaches, that is effectively what I am talking about. It is carbon abatement.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: It is not just coal and oil. It is gas too. We are trying, with carbon abatement, to move away from carbon-based fuels and to reduce the emissions that come from the burning of them to generate energy. I am not quite sure what the Deputy is getting at.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: To be clear about that, as far as I am concerned, we should use as few carbon fuels as we can. I recognise that we will be using gas in particular for quite some time as a transition fuel until we can replace gas with biogas, until we can develop a hydrogen economy and until we can generate sufficient electricity from renewable sources, predominantly wind but also solar, and maybe other...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I do not think I can give any certainty on that. All I can say is that, by 2050, we have a target of generating 37 GW of electricity offshore. At least 10 GW of electricity will be generated onshore by wind. There will probably be a considerable amount on top of that from solar too. Hopefully, at that point, we will have quite a large hydrogen economy and a large biofuel and biogas...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: Yes. It is necessary. We have said that Ireland wants to reach net zero by 2050 and maybe before that. My job is to take this in chunks. We have targets to get to by 2025, which is not that far away, and by 2030, which are very demanding. I think that is where the focus is now.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: It is, yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: I talked a lot about carbon capture and storage at the start. I do not know if the Deputy was here for that. The cement industry is difficult to reduce emissions from. We are effectively trying to do three things. One is to shift the industry towards a lower carbon form of cement and to try to incentivise that through public procurement, with State construction contracts and so on....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: The Deputy and I often disagree on various different policies but I think that is a fair concern, that this would be held up as a solution that can give a green card to the industry to keep doing what it is doing, because at some point we will just capture the emissions. That is why I think we need to make progress in understanding what is feasible and what is not, and on what can apply here...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Review of the Climate Action Plan 2023: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment (7 Dec 2023)

Simon Coveney: Knowing the Minister, Deputy Ryan's view on this issue, I think he will be impatient to get some recommendations about what is possible and what is not. That will determine how we will work with the cement industry in the future. This is a sector that has to find a credible route to reducing emissions, given how big a contributor it is. We want to do that in a way that does not wipe out an...