Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Yes, it is the demand-side strategy. We have smart meters being rolled out around the country and that is part of demand-side strategy but I will see if there is a specific document on that.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is working with my Department and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications on a biomethane strategy at the moment and the green hydrogen strategy is due to be published very soon.

Senator Boylan asked about the source of funds for voted expenditure additions this year to pay for the generators. Approximately €200 million is planned to be voted through, of which €90 million comes from savings in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and the other €110 million is from Exchequer funds, given we have buoyant tax returns this year.

The PSO, levy was designed to subsidise wind farms and renewable energy. The idea was that this renewable energy would impose an extra cost on the grid and this cost could be paid for by applying a small charge on everybody’s bill. Last year it was approximately €50. What was not envisaged was that renewable energy might save a person money in the future. One of the problems sometimes when people are framing climate action or changes relating to the environment is that it is assumed that they are going to have a cost and that they are going to be negative. As it turns out it is saving us money because oil and gas are so expensive. There was no mechanism within the law and it had never been foreseen that the PSO levy could be negative. It will be a negative amount of €75 this year. Everybody is going to be credited with €75 on their bill. One of the reasons to put this through as emergency legislation is so that money can be applied to people’s bills as soon as possible.

The Senator also asked whether the Energy Charter Treaty could prevent us from shutting down gas power and whether a risk analysis had been done on that. I will have to come back to her with an answer to that question but it is a good one.

Senator Hoey asked what happens to these generators after they are decommissioned. The Bill provides that they will be sold after they are decommissioned. I was also asked if this new capacity will lock in our dependence on these generators and what other fuel these generators use. There will either be using natural gas or liquid distillate. They are there to be used in emergencies; they are peaking power plants and are not to be used all of the time. The idea is that if a number of other generators fail on the grid at the same time, we have that backup and do not have a blackout. The entire purpose of this Bill is to prevent blackouts in the winter, particularly in the winter of 2023-24.

I was also asked whether the ESB could win the contracts to be the generator and whether it is likely to win it. I do not know if it is likely but it can certainly apply like any other generator.

There was a question about what way the Bill relates to turf. It increases the borrowing capacity for Bord na Móna to get away from turf. I take the point on that. The fact is that it amends the Turf Development Act 1998 and that is the reason turf is in the Title.

I was also asked whether this was being done for data centres. Part of the reason for having to bring the Bill forward is increased demand from large electricity users, many of which are data centres, but many generators have also been failing and much of our generating capacity has had unexpected outages in the past. With that, as they have become more unreliable, we need to cover for them.

We have many of data centres but they are generating approximately 2% of our emissions and we have to take this in context. It would not be a smart idea to double our data centre capacity or to throw in huge quantities of them when we are trying to do everything to ensure that we have good security of supply. That is why the CRU issued its new guidance on data centres and said they should not be connected to the grid if there is any chance that they are going to impair our security of supply. That applies, in particular, to Dublin. EirGrid and ESB Networks are the bodies that grant access for a new data centre. The centre must have planning permission first but it also needs a grid connection. Those grid connections will not come about if there is any chance that they are going to impair the security of supply.

As was pointed out by Senator Burke, this is a large area of the economy. I believe there are 200,000 people employed in the pharma and tech sector. Part of the infrastructure of those companies is data centres. There is a significant number of people working in that area, which generated €15 billion in corporate taxes last year. This paid for a large portion of Government expenditure and it generated less than 2% of emissions. While we need to ensure they do not expand quickly and put our grid at risk, because none of these companies would like it if there were blackouts and would like that even less than if we were not to give them data centres, we have to be realistic about this. It is not the case that we can just say that all of our problems are about data centres and that if we get rid of data centres we would not have to engage in any climate action. It is something that we need to watch carefully and to constrain.