The overarching objective of the Government's energy policy is to ensure secure and sustainable supplies of competitively priced energy to all consumers. Coal has played a larger part in our energy mix in recent years, with the predominant increase coming in power generation, primarily due to its competitiveness. Coal's enhanced competitiveness as an energy source is caused by its low price due to increased supplies, particularly from the USA.
Security of energy supply is crucial to every society and economy. A well balanced fuel mix that provides reliable energy, minimises costs, and protects against supply disruptions and price volatility, is essential to Irish consumers and businesses. Our heavy reliance on imported fossil fuels to meet our energy needs is predicted to continue for some time to come, as outlined in the SEAI publication "Energy Forecasts for Ireland to 2020".
However, progress is being made towards increasing the share of renewable energy in our generation portfolio. The 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive set Ireland a legally binding target of meeting 16% of our energy requirements from renewable sources by 2020, to be achieved through 40% renewables in electricity, 12% in heat and 10% in transport. In order to support the development of renewable electricity generation, policy interventions, such as REFIT, are designed to incentivise the market to deliver the necessary renewable generation capacity.
In its Annual Renewable report 2013, EirGrid estimated that meeting the 40% renewable electricity targets in Ireland would reduce the CO2 intensity of emissions in the power sector from 489g/kWh in 2011 to approximately 300g/kWh in 2020, representing an improvement of 38%.
Choices regarding technology for energy generation are commercial matters for the operators and I have no role or function in this regard. However, I am currently in the process of developing a new Energy Policy White Paper which will set out Ireland’s energy policy for the coming years. To facilitate the development of the new White Paper, a Green Paper was published in May 2014 commencing a public consultation period that concluded on 31 July 2014 and one of the issues raised in the Green Paper relates to the future of the coal plant at Moneypoint. Over 1,200 submissions were received on the Green Paper as part of that process and my officials are currently reviewing all of the submissions received.
