Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to stand here today to support Deputy Tony McLoughlin's prohibition of onshore hydraulic fracking Bill. I also congratulate the Minister of State on his reappointment and his new ministerial role and assure him that the Green Party is looking forward to working with him to ensure the future health and sustainability of our country and, indeed, our planet. I believe we are taking a small step in that direction today by beginning the process of passing this anti-fracking Bill in the Seanad.

That the Bill has made it this far is a testament to the hard work of community groups, farmers, local activists and organisations working to prevent climate change. In particular, credit must go to Deputy Tony McLoughlin and the activists of Love Leitrim, who are here in the Gallery today. They have worked extremely hard to see this through. They prepared the Bill, laid the ground work through their campaigns, engaged with farming, rural and urban communities across their county and beyond, and delivered a weight of public opinion, including the signing of a petition for this Bill by 11,000 citizens, in favour of getting rid of this dangerous, wasteful and polluting form of extraction before it gets a foothold here in Ireland. Friends of the Earth also deserves a shout out for providing the detail and research on the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing and demonstrating that it has actually been at imminent threat of deployment. Its consideration of the climate impacts of the technology, which I will address shortly, are also on the agenda thanks to its work and that of others.

The Bill has enjoyed universal support as it passed through the Dáil, with not one vote against it at any Stage and that is very much to be welcomed. I expect and hope that it will receive the same reception here in the Seanad. We need to move quickly and decisively on this issue if we are to avoid getting locked into a wasteful and increasingly outmoded system that would be in contradiction to our international, European and ethical obligations. I can attest to the opposition to fracking in my party, the Green Party, and the Civil Engagement Group in the Seanad and, in particular, to that of Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, who could not be here today but was eager for me to express her support for the Bill.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing as it is more properly known, is in some way a siren song energy technology. We have seen it deliver low energy prices and fuels with an allegedly low climate impact in the US and elsewhere in a manner that also seems to boost energy independence. For the advocates of gas as a transition fuel, fracking seems a god send and a way to make home-grown gas in sparsely populated areas and further damage more polluting fuels like coal and oil.This approach has delivered some energy stability for the US during the recession, but at serious cost to local communities, rural and farming interests, and the long-term health of our planet. The process, when not done correctly, can lead to serious damage to our environment, including groundwater pollution, methane gas releases and even minor seismic events. When the process is done perfectly correctly, we see just how far from a solution to the energy crisis it actually is. At a time when climate change has led to record high temperatures across Europe already, here is an energy extraction technique that uses truly staggering amounts of water and energy in its extraction. We still do not have enough information on the methane release levels from fracking which, were they to exceed just a few percentage points, would make fracking as bad for our climate as coal. These are the aspects of fracking that the energy companies focus less on in their brochures as they visit the energy ministries across Europe. This is very far from a free lunch, and I am glad we are nipping it in the bud now before it wastes serious amounts of time in the Irish energy debate.

I will now address that debate and widen out today's discussion to consider what exactly is Ireland's energy strategy. We need to get serious about where we are heading as a country. We are a signatory to the Paris Agreement and are part of the EU 2020 and 2030 energy and climate packages, which oblige us to boost our energy efficiency and renewable energy levels radically while slashing our emissions. While we were all united in our revulsion at President Trump's announcement this month of his intention to pull the United States of America out of the Paris Agreement, are we really serious about Ireland's commitments under it? The time for transition fuels like gas is over. I am not saying they did not play a role in reducing European and American emissions in the short term, but there have been a number of developments over the past decade that have rendered as semi-farcical the concept of installing expensive capacity and of engaging in costly and destructive exploration.

We now know that the current level of known reserves is massively more than we as a species can even contemplate touching. We can burn only between one fifth to one third of the remaining fuel that we know about before we would tip the Earth into an increase in temperature of a potentially catastrophic 2° Celsius or more. That means one thing: we must keep it in the ground. There must be no new exploration, no new mining, no new piping, no fracking and no shale oil - end of. The complex mathematics of the climate does not care about our political arguments against this, nor does it care about our convenience or our resistance to change. We simply cannot argue with the planet any more than we already have. These limits are natural, and it is time to stop speaking out of both sides of our mouths on this by signing a climate pact with one hand while the other hand cuts peat for power generation or signs another licence for oil exploration. We are at the stage now of risking accumulating massive stranded assets as the world moves on to a post-fossil fuel future. This means a real national mitigation strategy with teeth, and a plan for the massive deployment of renewables to replace our existing electricity and transport energy infrastructure. This means not approving the liquid natural gas terminal on the Shannon to import US gas extracted through fracking, lest we risk making hypocrites of ourselves and incentivising the global trade in fracked gas.

This brings me to the next, brighter part of the new reality, which is the final proper arrival of the renewable revolution. Renewable energy has sometimes felt like fusion power, always just 30 years away from being deployable. It seems as though we have being talking about solar panels and wind turbines and thorium reactors since former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, was in office. What seems to have passed many of us by, however, has been the absolute global explosion in renewable capacity over the past five years. The first term of the Obama Administration alone saw more solar panels installed in the USA than in all other years combined. China is deploying immense amounts of solar capacity in its bid to cut the growth in its emissions. This is driving down prices and dramatically increasing efficiency. Solar power especially now puts out more electricity at much lower cost, so low that it can even compete with coal in certain areas.

The fossil fuel industry is dying and they know it. Some in the industry are trying to diversify, others to rent-seek through expensive government lobbying and engineering campaigns that create doubt around climate change. Others are trying to waste our time and destroy our environment by pushing new wasteful and expensive technologies to access fuel we cannot even burn.

I seek assurances from the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, regarding the legal consequences of the EU-Canada trade deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA. We saw little resistance from the Government-----