Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 13 April 2017
333. Deputy Róisín Shortall asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the steps he will take to ensure that community owned wind farms have access on an affordable basis to the national grid. [18945/17]
View answerMy Department is currently developing a proposed new Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) which will be designed to assist Ireland in meeting its Electricity (RES-E) targets out to 2030. The new scheme design requires detailed economic analysis on the viability and cost effectiveness of supporting several renewable technologies, at various scales.
The Programme for Government recognises the importance of community participation in renewable energy projects in both the national and local interest. This builds on the 2015 Energy White Paper commitment to widen the opportunity for community and citizen participation in renewable energy projects. With this in mind, the development of the new RESS also includes an assessment of models for community participation in renewable energy projects.
This work has identified many challenges facing community participation in renewable energy projects, including financial, technical, legal, infrastructural (including grid access) and institutional barriers, and appropriate policy measures to address these challenges are now currently being assessed. The results of this policy assessment will feed directly into the design elements of the new RESS and following on from this, my Department will publish a public consultation on the design of the new support scheme during this quarter.
There will be many decisions to be made on this scheme with regard to scale, technologies and how communities will have a greater involvement than in previous schemes. However, following the outcome of this public consultation and before any new scheme is introduced, it will need to secure Government approval and state aid clearance from the European Commission. Subject to this, it is expected that the new scheme will become operational in the first half of 2018.
While I am strongly committed to developing policies to support community participation in renewable energy projects, the specific question about grid access is an operational matter for the national grid system operators in conjunction with the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER).
