Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is welcome to the House to discuss the most important topic of energy security. While there is much to be said about the coming winter and the rising cost of electricity in Ireland and across Europe, I trust my colleagues to bring these issues to the fore and will instead take the opportunity to look forward to the future. Prevention is the best remedy. Now is the time to tackle the problems of the future.

When we debated the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill this summer, the Minister stated:

The advantage we have in that is that offshore wind is the cheaper fuel now. I agree, we should look at nuclear options [...] I would not rule out anything because the climate crisis is so severe. We must look at every option. In truth, I do not see [...] nuclear energy developing in the way solar and wind energy is developing, with the costs coming down. It will never be competitive now - nuclear versus renewable - in our country because we have such a wind resource.

When we discuss costs, we speak of the euro per megawatt hour, €/MWh, the levelised cost of energy, LCOE, which is a measure of the average net present cost of electricity generation for a source over its lifetime. It is used for investment planning and to compare different methods of electricity generation on a consistent basis. Herein lies one of the most overused and flawed misconceptions when it comes to decarbonising the energy sector. I accept that solar and wind have lower levelised costs than nuclear, but this is a gross over-simplification. The US Energy Information Administration, which publishes its official LCOE figures, even says that not so directly when it compares the LCOE of wind and solar to other technology. It even goes so far as to show them in separate charts to discourage comparison. Why is that? I gave the Minister a copy of the diagrams before the start of the debate.

Let us start with solar power. It is all explained in this chart, which outlines negative wholesale energy prices. The light and dark coloured gold is solar power and all of the other colours put together is the demand. The chart is the value of electricity over the course of the day, the gross profit of an energy operator or producer per megawatt hour. In a traditional energy grid, without a lot of wind and solar, this value would go a little higher in a day when there is more demand for electricity. It is basic economics: where there is a higher demand, there is a higher price but when one floods a market with one's commodity, its value will go down. That is exactly what is happening in places like California, which has installed large amounts of solar and wind. Not only does the value of electricity become depressed, it actually goes negative during peak production hours. The more intermittent sources of energy that one adds to this depresses the value even more, to the point whereby energy providers have zero incentive to continue producing, unless one adds subsidies, which are a drain on the taxpayer and do not reflect value for money. Either this, or the systems get shut off, to artificially constrain supply and inflate costs, which likewise is a poor return on an investment in renewable energy infrastructure. The amount of solar energy on the market compared with the value, as more is added, gives a steady downward trend. The same issue applies to wind power also. These value drops jeopardise profitability, phased-out support schemes, the decarbonisation of the power system and the reaching of renewable targets, all of which is bad news for the Minister, as well as the Minister for Finance and, not least of all, climate.

The usual response is why we cannot just add batteries in long-range transmission to smooth out the grid. After all, it is windy in some cases and sunny in others. Data shows that helps a little but not much. Storage can help renewable profitability, but it also experiences diminishing returns. Modelling has shown that even doubling hydro pump capacity has a positive but minor impact on the value of wind power. The key to decarbonising the energy sector is adding constant, firm sources of energy such as hydro or geothermal, which are heavily limited by location, or nuclear power. Wind and solar will be of great benefit, but pure renewables will not be enough to get us to net zero.

I understand the allure of 100% renewables, but surely the Minister will agree that sustainable decarbonisation must be prioritised above ideology, be it renewable only, anti-nuclear or any other belief which places dogma over that which best serves the Irish people. The road to zero emissions in the energy sector is being unnecessarily lengthened by the continued existence of section 18(6) of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999, which prohibits the use of nuclear fission for the generation of electricity. The section owes its existence to the Minister's former party colleague, the then Minister, Trevor Sargent. I believe the banning of nuclear fission in Ireland was a mistake, born out of anti-nuclear sentiments in the 1990s, which were popularised by the fossil fuel industry and tapped into the passive Anglophobia in this country, as it was the UK that was accepting nuclear as a tool with which to combat climate change. If it is energy security that the Minister is after, a fixed output, reliable, safe and sustainable solution can be found in clean energy provided by fission reactors. If that is not recognised by the Government, then the public will pay the price down the line.