'Jobs could be created if we get price right,' energy forum told

ENERGY EFFICIENCY should not be seen as a route to job creation, economist John Fitzgerald has told an all-island conference on energy efficiency and job creation.

However, architect and broadcaster Duncan Stewart said phasing out importation of oil, coal and gas could generate 120,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector. Moreover, 50,000 jobs could be created every year in retrofitting buildings with energy-saving measures.

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) economist Dr Fitzgerald told the European Commission conference in Dundalk that energy was a highly capital intensive business and investment was likely to be “prohibitively expensive” for some time. “Energy efficiency is not about creating jobs. If you wanted to create jobs you wouldn’t start with energy. But jobs could well be created if we get the price right.”

Decades of under-pricing and subsidising of energy costs had been bad environmental and bad economic policy, he said. “It is impossible to justify spending public money when the cost is so high. People have to pay the true cost of energy . . . subsidy doesn’t create jobs, it kills them.”

He cautioned the conference to “remember Goldilocks. Too high and you screw business, too low and you’re creating a subsidy. You have to get the price right.”

Mr Stewart said jobs could be created if the State stopped importing fuel. The Republic was spending an unsustainable €6-€9 billion a year on imported fuel. “We need to wake up to the fact that we are facing an energy crisis. We have massive resources in renewable energy we are doing practically nothing with.”

About 5 per cent of the energy used by the State came from renewable sources such as wind, wave and biomass. That figure was even lower for homes which used just 1 per cent renewable energy, he said.

Irish homes were very energy inefficient – using twice the fossil fuels of the average European home, even though the heating demand in Ireland was typically much less than other European countries.

Some 400,000 homes in Ireland were in fuel poverty and €450 million was being spent on fuel allowances, practically all on imported fuel, he said.