Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 128: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will report on upcoming negotiations with the UK Government to facilitate the export of renewable energy to the UK; if he will provide an estimate of the amount of power that Irish renewable energy operators envisage will be exported to the UK on a weekly and monthly basis; the time-frame for the estimated opening up of the market here to British renewable power; the value of this potential new business to the economy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30303/12]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Last week, building on the June 2011 British Irish Council agreement on developing an all islands energy approach, I had the latest in a series of meetings with UK Energy Minister Charles Hendry around the issue of developing renewable electricity trade between the two countries. Both sides agreed to work towards concluding a Memorandum of Understanding by the end of the year which will be an important step in ensuring that cross border renewable trade can take place.

Officials from both sides are examining a range of issues around the electricity market, regulatory and technical grid areas to underpin the creation of cross jurisdictional renewable electricity trade. The UK Department of Energy has just concluded a public call for evidence around the issues involved in opening up their market to allow for renewable electricity imports.

Increased interconnection between the two islands offers Irish developers the prospect of being able to access a much larger electricity market. The electricity market in GB is around ten times the scale of the electricity market in Ireland. In the short term there are opportunities for on and off shore wind and biomass projects, but in the medium to longer term as technologies mature and become commercially deployable, there will also be opportunities for wave and tidal developers.

The volume of trade that could develop has the potential to become very significant over time. Ireland has a renewable energy resource that is significantly in advance of our own market scale and the challenge for developers will be to come forward with projects of scale that are economically viable and environmentally acceptable. There are several large developers already seriously examining projects and some of these proposals also involve developing pumped hydro storage options.

There are clearly construction jobs while the projects are being built, but if projects of scale can be developed, then there will be an opportunity to capture some of the development value chain in Ireland as well as the job opportunities in the operations and maintenance areas.