Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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294. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government to estimate the cost of converting all fossil fuel powered electricity generation in the State to renewable energy. [43583/25]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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The matters raised in this Question are matters for electricity generation entities and not ones in which I, as Minister, have any function.

Notwithstanding power generation decarbonisation objectives and increasing renewable electricity targets, the variable nature of some renewable technologies currently requires that dispatchable, typically fossil fuel, generation remains crucial for ensuring security of supply in the coming years. As set out in the 2021 'Policy Statement on Security of Electricity Supply', the Government has set a target of having at least 2GW of new, flexible, gas-fired generation by 2030 in our Climate Action Plans to ensure secure generation of electricity at time of low renewable output and/or high demand. This allows for the integration of a large volume of wind and solar electricity projects that displace the need to run fossil fuel plants for baseload, without compromising security of supply.

In addition, increasing amounts of batteries, long duration storage, interconnector capacity and demand side response have also been procured in recent capacity market auctions which will lessen Ireland's dependence on fossil fuel imports in the coming years.