The Republic needs to integrate its energy market more closely with Britain and the European Union to ensure a competitive market and security of supply, Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan said yesterday.
Addressing a meeting of the Association of European Journalists in Dublin, Mr Ryan said the State imported most of its energy and was dependent on "just two pipes" to Scotland for the gas needed to produce a large proportion of the electricity used by the Republic.
But he praised the EU, which he described as "the most successful example of international, political and economic co-operation of our time", for attempting to manage electricity and gas networks on a pan-European rather than a piecemeal basis.
Pointing out that the electricity and gas networks of France and Germany had developed and were maintained on a national basis, he said a competitive market and security of supply required that this change.
Mr Ryan said EU climate change and renewable energy targets would not be easy to achieve. But he said the EU had produced a Green Paper on Energy which proposed a target of 20 per cent of EU energy needs to be sourced from renewable energy by 2020. "I would not like to see these energy targets as the limits of our ambitions, but they are at the forefront of international standards.
"If the EU can take a common approach on energy, and articulate it with a common voice, then hopefully the rest of the world will begin to follow suit."
But Mr Ryan said he did not want anyone to think the use of biofuels was "a panacea" for the Republic's energy needs.
Biofuel had a place in the mix of renewable energies and he pointed out that the Government was committed to imposing a 5 per cent biofuel obligation in the fuels of all oil importers. Pressed on the level Mr Ryan said it might rise to 10 per cent but the main point was that it would never be "a simple solution" to the State's fuel requirements.
Mr Ryan said the use of biofuels was "a complex issue" in that biofuel targets in the United States had pushed the price of corn beyond those in Mexico and developing regions in Central and South America. On the other hand higher crop prices were sometimes beneficial to developing countries as they were primarily agrarian in nature.
The Minister said he was "surprised" at the decision of Dublin City Council in signing a contract for a municipal incinerator. But he did not see the point "of having a hissy fit" and leaving Government if individual projects did not go as the Green Party like them to. The Green Party had known there would be difficulties when they entered office, he added.
"The Green Party entered Government because we recognised that taking the hard decisions and reforming from within is the most effective way to achieve change." He said the Green Party had already begun its internal debate on engagement with the EU and he was confident the party was ready to engage in upcoming debate about the proposed EU constitutional treaty.
