Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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Ireland has made considerable progress in decarbonising our electricity sector over the last decade, driven by the steady roll out of renewable generation sources and their successful integration onto the electricity grid.

According to provisional data from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), on average 46.1% of electricity generated in Ireland in 2023 was renewable. For an overview of electricity production data, I refer the Deputy to the SEAI's monthly electricity production figures: seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/monthly-energy-data/electricity/ .

Ireland now has over 6 GW of renewable electricity generation capacity. Wind, particularly onshore, remains our largest source of renewable electricity and accounted for 39% of all electricity generated in 2023. With approximately 4.8 GW of wind generation, Ireland is a world leader in levels of installed wind energy capacity per capita, as well as in the integration of variable renewable electricity onto the grid.

Solar generation is rapidly growing with over 1 GW now installed, which is an enormous increase on the previous year. Solar generation is highly complementary to wind generation and increased solar capacity will help Ireland to generate clean electricity all year round.

The recently published Climate Action Plan 2024 (CAP 24) reaffirms the ambitious targets of 9 GW of onshore wind capacity, 8 GW of solar capacity and at least 5 GW of offshore wind capacity connected to the grid by 2030 to support the achievement of the electricity sectoral emissions ceilings. This will require a major acceleration of renewable energy over the coming years.