Intensive pressure on the stability of electricity supplies has forced market regulators to prolong the use of coal and oil to generate power. The move will compromise the State’s ability to meet ambitious climate targets laid down in law. But it is the inevitable outwork of supply struggling to catch up with surging demand, an act born of the simple need to keep the lights on. It should never have come to this, yet the action taken reflects limited options in the face of increasing blackout risk.
A formal warning from EirGrid, operator of the national grid, that serious “supply challenges” will persist for years led Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan to concede he could not be “absolutely certain” there would be no power outages, an extraordinary admission. In response, Taoiseach Micheál Martin was quick to declare his confidence that there would be no break to power supplies this winter. Still, it is hardly a good sign that the question was posed at all.
Regulators say winter supply risks have declined due to the planned return of two power stations that have been shut for urgent repairs. But supply margins will remain tight and the lack of reserves may lead to system alerts. Such are the constraints bearing down on a market liberalised two decades ago with the bright promise of long-term efficiency and keener pricing. It didn’t work out that way.
If the market was working smoothly it would still be a titanic challenge to manage the transition to renewable power. Now, faced with a “significant” generation gap, the central thrust of policy is to avert crisis.
Several factors are at work, among them a shortfall in contracted generation expected in the winter of 2022-23. Emergency generation will therefore be required. This comes as demand grows rapidly, driven in the main by new Big Tech data centres. Large power stations have proved less reliable than foreseen and strains on generation make it more difficult to schedule system outages for maintenance. In addition, a disappointing auction of capacity for the 2024-25 winter period left a supply shortfall that must be made up. The upshot is that coal and oil generation that was scheduled to come off the grid will now be retained, with clear implications for climate policy.
There are tensions here between competing imperatives. Yes, the mitigation measures are bad for carbon emissions and their use must be confined to as short a period as possible. At the same time, stability on the all-island grid is essential. In an economy that trades heavily on foreign direct investment, threats to the continuity of supply do not sit well.
Although Ireland has become something of a magnet for data centres, it is plainly not sustainable to allow their expansion to jeopardise services essential to individuals and industry.