Gas exploration still needed to keep the home fires burning

Midwinter is when the Republic uses most electricity. Cold weather, long nights, businesses running at capacity, extended shopping hours, full hospitals and schools, all add up to a surge in energy consumption.

About 60 per cent of the energy that makes all this activity possible comes from burning natural gas. Even if this falls to its projected level of 30 per cent by 2030, when the Government wants renewables to supply almost three-quarters of electricity, we will still need the fuel.

In fact, even if we hit the renewable target by 2030, our dependence on gas will fall only by about one-third, as our electricity demand is likely to increase by 30 per cent or so over the same time.

Nobody believes we will not be burning gas to generate electricity in a decade's time. Richard Bruton, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, and the Government's Climate Change Advisory Council, both acknowledged recently that it will remain essential.

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Oil and gas are found in the same reservoirs, and it is not possible to tell which you will strike

This is something on which you would hope the Cabinet focuses on Tuesday when it discusses Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s proposed ban on oil exploration in the Republic’s territorial waters.

Future searches

Varadkar announced the Republic would ban future “oil exploration”, but would honour all existing licences, at September’s UN summit. The energy industry interpreted this as a bar on future searches for all fossil fuel. Oil and gas are found in the same reservoirs, and it is not possible to tell which you will strike when you first begin drilling.

Our existing indigenous gas reserves, the Corrib field and almost-empty Kinsale reservoir, will be fully depleted by the middle of the next decade. They supply about two-thirds of what we now burn.

Energy suppliers, including State-owned Gas Networks Ireland, argue that finding a replacement, if there is one there, would underpin the security of future supplies of the gas that we will need to ensure our homes, workplaces, schools and hospitals keep functioning. In short, like it or not, we need to maintain fossil fuel exploration in the Republic’s territorial waters.