2025-12-18

102. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment if he will report on the commitment in the programme for Government to “explore if legislation could be enacted to divert surplus renewable energy, that would otherwise be wasted, to homes in fuel poverty”; the progress that has been made on this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [72872/25]

Ireland is wasting over €400 million every year on surplus energy. The programme for Government says that legislation could be enacted to divert surplus renewable energy to homes that are in fuel poverty. The amount being wasted has jumped from over €250 million in 2023. I ask the Minister of State to outline a timeline for the delivery of the diversion of wasted energy to the households that need it the most.

As the Deputy knows, imperfections and dispatch down are a major challenge facing the electricity system. Obviously, dispatch down is brought about by constraints on the grid and the challenges of getting the electricity from the point of generation to where there is a demand and a need. If the grid is not capable of carrying the electricity at a particular time, energy generators are required to effectively stop generating so that there is not more complexity on the grid. This complex issue can only be addressed by taking a systematic and multifaceted approach, requiring investment in grid, storage and demand flexibility. We are already taking steps to invest in this critical energy infrastructure and, for example, PR6 will enable the delivery of over 500 capital network projects supporting the integration of increasing volumes of renewable energy and helping to reduce the amount of wasted energy in the first instance. In July the Government committed to investing €3.5 billion of national development plan, NDP, funding in EirGrid and ESB Networks in order to ensure that the PR6 infrastructure programme can be delivered. That level of investment by the State in ESB Networks and EirGrid provides those companies with capacity to leverage against significant further borrowing that will ensure we will see a very significant upgrade of our networks. Legislation providing the legal mechanism necessary for the investment of €1.5 billion of this funding into ESB Networks has now passed all Stages and was signed into law by the President last month. Further legislation in relation to the investment in EirGrid will be progressed next year. Last year the Department published the electricity storage policy framework for Ireland which supported the procurement of 500 MW of demand flexibility products by ESB Networks and 500 MW of long-duration electricity storage by EirGrid to meet specific network needs. Work is already under way to ensure the timely delivery of those projects.

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. As I said earlier, the figure for wasted energy was €250 million in 2023 but it is now almost half a billion euro. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of households are in debt and energy poverty has reached record levels. Approximately €1.3 million worth of energy has gone down the drain today. This would have heated 390 million water tanks but that 1.2 GW of power was lost forever. EnergyCloud has a model to divert this waste into a public good. It has a concept and case studies show that it would make a real difference to people's lives. The Government is making a political choice not to pursue this model. The Minister, nuair a thagainn sé ar ais, should at least acknowledge that the Government supports EnergyCloud. Then the necessary data can be prepared over the next six months in order to make progress and hit the ground running.

As the Deputy knows, the generation of electricity is one thing but the transmission of it is another. Oftentimes electricity is generated at locations where there is not demand for it and it has to be transmitted through the various different networks that exist. It is not as simple as taking it from one location to another because of the constraints that I talked about earlier. Of course, officials in the Department and the SEAI have met with representatives of EnergyCloud on a number of occasions. As I understand it, the approach taken to date by EnergyCloud has been to focus on approved housing body, AHB, and local authority homes. This has had the benefit of facilitating an aggregated and area-based approach. This is not something that can just be done in isolation. The national energy affordability task force, following the publication of its first report, is now entering a new phase in its work. The task force is examining a range of matters, including the programme for Government commitment to explore whether legislation could be enacted to divert surplus renewable energy, that would otherwise be wasted, to homes in fuel poverty.

The reality is that there are difficulties with our grid, which is very constrained. Investment in the grid must take place, which the Minister of State mentioned in response to the previous question. However, the cost of that should not be borne by ordinary householders but by the State and by larger energy consumers. A big part of the problem is that data centres are taking up almost one third of Ireland's energy. The surge in energy demand from data centres has already led to housing not being delivered. One such example was in Portlaoise, where multiple families were told they could not move into their homes because an energy connection simply was not available. Similarly, investments that were intended for housing have, instead, been diverted to data centres because there is a first-come, first-served approach. That has to change. The energy regulator must be given the power to deal with that and to prioritise major grid infrastructure for major housing developments as opposed to giving all of our extra renewable energy directly to data centres. Will the Government commit today to moving away from the first-come, first-served model for grid connections and ensure that they are prioritised on a need basis?

I will be answering a question from Deputy Paul Murphy shortly on data centres but suffice to say that in the view of the Government data centres are a really important component of our growing economy and of the future in relation to the technological investment that we get here. Ireland has always been attractive to foreign direct investment which has been a bedrock of our industrial, economic and employment policy. There is little doubt that in recent years the focus has shifted from the pharmaceutical and medtech sectors, although both are still really fundamental drivers of our economy, and a new wave of investment is coming in data storage and the high-tech sector. Behind that, data centres are required. Efforts are often made by some in this House to suggest that this is some kind of folly but data centres today are what the advance factories were in the 1970s and 1980s. They drive the economy, our education system, our hospitals and our banking system. Effectively, they are a repository for the information that sits behind the way we live our lives now. This is not just something we can just cast aside, bury our heads in the sand and say we should ignore it. We need to be mindful of that. If data centres do not end up in Ireland, they will end up somewhere else and we will lose out in the long term. However, I accept that we have to manage this matter.