Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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1146. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources when the strategic environmental assessment of the draft National Bioenergy Plan, which was drafted in 2014 and has remained in draft form ever since, will be published and put to public consultation; the reason this information was not available before the recent consultation on a renewable heat incentive, which is one of the proposals in the draft plan; and the analysis which has been carried out of the sustainability of large scale importation of biofuels and solid biomass, which seems to be envisaged by the draft plan. [14172/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Draft Bioenergy Plan sets out the policy areas that must be coordinated to support the development of biomass sector in Ireland.  It identifies 19 measures to support the sustainable development of the sector.There are a wide range of Government departments, agencies and state bodies that are critical enablers for bioenergy development by virtue of their responsibility for areas such as forestry, agriculture, waste, research funding and business development. My Department is still in the process of finalising the draft Environmental report and associated Natura Impact Statement in respect of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Appropriate Assessment for the Bioenergy Plan. I expect that these documents and a revised draft bioenergy plan to go for public consultation in quarter two this year. This consultation will be advertised on my Department's website at www.dccae.gov.ie.

One key measure in the Draft Bioenergy Plan is the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). As the final design of the RHI was subject to public consultation, it was important to ascertain the views of the public before the SEA consultation on the draft Bioenergy Plan issued.

I am committed to ensuring that environmental sustainability is at the heart of the policies implemented by my Department, particularly given Ireland's objective of achieving a low carbon, climate resilient and environmentally sustainable economy by 2050. This will be reflected in the sustainability criteria applied in the final design of the RHI support scheme.

The recent consultation on the RHI recognised the importance of adopting a robust set of sustainability criteria, and raised the prospect of adopting the U.K. or E.U. standards for imported and domestic biomass used in the new scheme.

Though sustainability criteria exist for biofuels used in the transport sector as set out the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), currently there are no equivalent sustainability criteria for solid biomass such as wood chips and wood pellets.  The European Commission has published recommended sustainability criteria for solid biomass in its Communication (COM (2010) 0011). However, to date, it has been left up to each Member State to include these requirements when introducing subsidies for bioenergy. Additionally, the European Commission has proposed to reinforce the current sustainability criteria to include solid biomass through the proposed LULUCF (Land use, land-use change and forestry) Regulation and the proposed recasting of the Renewable Energy Directive. Both of these proposals were published in the second half of 2016, and will be considered as part of the final design on the RHI.