Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has reportedly said he supports building liquefied natural gas terminals to stave off energy shortages this winter.
The comments reportedly came during a private Fine Gael meeting in Cork, as reported exclusively by the Independent.ie.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar backs controversial gas terminals opposed by Greens’ Eamon Ryan https://t.co/Rz4WXPJmrA
— Irish Independent (@Independent_ie) August 24, 2022
Varadkar said that while he would ultimately like to see Ireland do away with gas long-term, that development was still “20 to 25 years away.”
“If you think ahead 25 to 30 years, we’ll hopefully not be using natural gas at all,” he reportedly said.
“We’ll be using renewable energy, including hydrogen. Renewable electricity is great, but it can only go so far, even when the batteries are great.
“You can turn renewable energy into hydrogen gas, which is the green gas that will replace natural gas in time. But that’s 20-25 years away.”
“So we’re going to need natural gas in the meantime, and I think having LNG storage in that sense would be beneficial in terms of security supply, because we’re relying on the Corrib gas field and the UK interconnector. If something went wrong with the UK interconnector, there’s no other way to get the gas into the country.”
However, he said he still opposed importing “dirty, filthy fracked gas from America or Africa or somewhere else.” The terminals, he said, would simply be to bring in non-fracked gas, which would protect Ireland’s energy supply.
However, this puts the Tánaiste squarely at odds with his Green Party coalition partner Eamon Ryan, who is vehemently opposed to LNG despite the ongoing energy crisis. He has said that such terminals should not be built “under any circumstances.” This objection even made it into the programme for government, which says that it doesn’t “make sense” to develop LNG terminals.
Green policies have been a huge point of contention within the government coalition, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil backbenchers telling Ryan that his proposed ban on turf could bring down the government, threatening the coalition’s stability.
Fine Gael TDs issue stern warning to Eamon Ryan over turf ban https://t.co/0YPJEc8RLm
— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 3, 2022
In addition, Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins recently defied the wishes of his Green colleagues, supporting an LNG terminal in north Kerry.
The Green party said his support was “very worrying”. https://t.co/wncSzm3XzY
— Newstalk Breakfast (@NTBreakfast) August 10, 2022