Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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729. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the proportion of renewable energy that will come from wind, solar, marine, anaerobic digestion combined heat and power, biomass combined heat and power and biomass combustion in the Government's plan to achieve its 2020 renewable targets; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21048/16]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive set Ireland a legally binding target of meeting 16% of our energy demand from renewable sources by 2020. The Government has a range of policy measures and schemes to incentivise the use of renewable energy. The Renewable Energy Feed-in-Tariff (REFIT) schemes support the development of a range of renewable electricity technologies including hydro, biomass combustion, biomass combined heat and power, landfill gas and onshore wind.  Work is also ongoing in my Department on the development of a new Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) to encourage the development of Ireland’s, diverse, indigenous renewable energy resources.

Good progress has been made towards meeting the 2020 40% renewable electricity generation target predominantly through onshore wind, which has proved to be the most commercial renewable energy technology in the Irish electricity market. Provisional figures provided by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) indicate that in 2015, 21.1% of Ireland’s electricity demand was met by wind generation. It is expected that approximately 35% of the 40% electricity target for 2020 will be met by wind generation.

Diversification of the renewable generation portfolio in the longer term will be important for creating a sustainable, carbon free, electricity system and biomass will have a role to play in this regard. Electricity generated from biomass, including cofiring of biomass in peat powered plants, is already supported through the REFIT scheme. In addition, the Programme for Government contains a commitment to support the transition of peat power plants to greater amounts of biomass. Depending on electricity demand, the full implementation of current policies could mean that up to 5% of electricity may be generated from biomass in 2020.

Ocean energy is not expected to make any significant contribution to the 2020 target. Globally, wave and tidal energy are not yet fully commercialised.  However, nine North Seas region countries, including Ireland, recently signed a political  declaration to further strengthen their energy cooperation.  The aim is to create good conditions for the development of offshore wind energy in order to ensure a sustainable, stable and affordable energy supply in the North Seas countries. 

Each year my Department publishes a list of renewable energy technologies supported under REFIT and the associated tariff for each. For convenience, the 2015-2016 list is outlined in the following table.

In the heating sector, my Department is working on the introduction of a new Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to support the deployment of renewable energy for commercial and industrial users of heat in the non-ETS sector. The primary aim of the RHI is to build on the progress already made in the renewable heat sector and help to reach Ireland's 12% renewable heat target by 2020. In 2015 it is estimated that 6.8% of heat was derived from renewable sources. The new RHI scheme is expected to become available in 2017.

In the transport sector Ireland aims to meet our 10% renewable target mainly through the increased use of sustainable biofuels, with electric vehicles also making a small contribution out to 2020. SEAI provisional figures for 2015 indicate 5.7% of our energy needs in the transport sector were met from renewable sources.

The SEAI publication Energy in Ireland 1990 – 2014 provides further information on progress made in relation of the use of renewable energy in Ireland and is available at the following link:

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