The London consulting firm CEPA was appointed by the Government to conduct a review of energy security in Ireland in May 2021. The review was to have been completed by now, but no publication date has been indicated, nor have reasons been offered for the delay. The Department of Environment and Climate Action summarised the project as follows, in the invitation to tender issued to consulting firms in November 2020:

  • Identification and examination of the key risks to the security of supply in the electricity and natural gas systems in Ireland.
  • Identification of options that could address or mitigate these challenges in the period to 2030.
  • Appraisal of these options in the context of ensuring a sustainable pathway to 2050.
  • The position regarding energy security has been problematic for years and has become urgent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For electricity, there have been system alerts from Eirgrid, but fortunately no actual blackouts.

    Indigenous gas production from the Corrib field off Mayo is declining and there could be very little supply five or six years from now

    Domestic generation and transmission capacity is stretched and there is interconnection only with the British grid, itself not endowed with a large reserve margin. A new interconnector to France is planned and an extra interconnector to Britain has just received planning consent. It could be completed as early as 2024, according to Greenlink, the project promoters, but the French project will take several years more.

    Meanwhile, the expansion of domestic generating capacity to meet forecast increases in electricity demand is stalled by planning delays for conventional gas-fired plants and windfarms. Eirgrid believes that substantial grid reinforcement is required, not least to accommodate the IDA’s ambitions for more data centres, and the company is meeting widespread resistance from objectors in the planning process.

    Indigenous gas production from the Corrib field off Mayo is declining and there could be very little supply five or six years from now. Gas is the main fuel for power generation and most of our supply come from Scotland through a single pipeline system, which also serves Northern Ireland. Inadequate gas would mean inadequate electricity.

    The CEPA report should accordingly be straightforward for the consultants to write and the available courses of action to improve supply security are clear enough

    There are no plans for additional pipelines – building one to France would be costly and Ireland has no gas storage and no importation terminal for liquefied natural gas.

    The Government is opposed to building one and is also opposed to the exploration of any natural gas offshore, even though some of the exploration companies believe that there could be extra fields not too far from the existing Corrib platform and the onshore terminal in north Mayo.

    The CEPA report should accordingly be straightforward for the consultants to write and the available courses of action to improve supply security are clear enough. A company called New Fortress Energy has a project for an LNG terminal on the Shannon estuary, but the Government is opposed.

    Exploration companies are officially discouraged from seeking new indigenous supplies. The Government acknowledges that continued usage of gas is unavoidable through the energy transition, but has run into a cul-de-sac – each of the feasible options for avoiding a gas shortage has been ruled out, in favour of an act of faith that extra supplies from Britain, which come ultimately from the North Sea and Norway, will plug the gap as Corrib declines.

    If there is a gas shortage in Europe, this will affect Britain, which is no longer covered by any gas-sharing agreement that might emerge at EU level.

    All three components of the CEPA study should have been completed by the consultants and published by the minister inside 12 months

    Meanwhile, the logjams in the planning system, which inhibit the development of electricity generation and transmission capacity, are not being addressed. Onshore wind development is becoming very difficult and politicians favour offshore, where there will be fewer sources of objection but far longer timescales and potentially higher costs.

    It is commonly understood that European countries may face gas rationing this coming winter and that there could also be inadequate electricity supplies, with risk of gas and power being denied to high volume users. Ireland has a notably weak position regarding energy security, which pre-dates the war in Ukraine.

    The invasion makes the early completion of the CEPA study more, rather than less, urgent. The Irish food processing, especially the dairy sector, is in a particularly vulnerable position given the changeover from oil to natural gas, which the dairy companies invested in response to Government-led extensions to the pipeline network.

    According to the terms of reference as announced by the Department of Environment and Climate Action, all three components of the CEPA study should have been completed by the consultants and published by the minister inside 12 months. That is to say, they should have been released two months ago and a public consultation already commenced.

    The explanation for the delay appears to be the avoidance of embarrassment for a Government which has ruled out several of the measures that any study of energy security is bound to recommend.