Green energy has to lead to lower bills – McHugh

Renewable energy must lead to lower electricity bills or they will be met with resistance. That’s the message from Saoirse McHugh, Independent candidate for the Midlands North West constituency in the upcoming European elections.

McHugh said: “How can we expect people to buy into renewables if there’s no visible benefit for them and their electricity bills stay sky high?” she told The Mayo News. “If we are to transition away from fossil fuels we need everybody on board but the current model is not facilitating this. At the moment, licenses for wind farms are being given out all over Ireland to private companies who are going to make a fortune off the energy. Now is the time to really go for it with state owned energy, make the investment and have public control of our supply.”

Many renewable projects have been met with resistance from communities across Ireland and McHugh believes this is a direct result of people having no stake in them.

“Of course people are annoyed by big wind farms going up next door to them when they still have to pay so much for electricity. The return on investment on these renewable projects is huge, once they’re built they can make money for decades but we are just giving that opportunity away to private investors instead of capitalising on it ourselves.”

The ESB does own a certain amount of renewables through its subsidiary companies but McHugh claims this model does nothing to lower energy costs.

“These subsidiary companies trade energy at the same prices as everybody else and are profit driven, so the customer still loses. We currently import over 80 percent of our energy, most of it from fossil fuels which is a huge outflow of wealth and carbon every year. We are slowly moving towards renewables but it’s all being privately owned and we are missing a great opportunity to create a brilliant, publicly owned resource. With the right level of ambition and organisation the ESB could start developing and owning all of Ireland’s renewables and this would safeguard our energy supply and lower our fuel costs. There is a large initial investment but once we own it we own it for ever. Once we give it away, we’ve given it away forever.”

With just over three weeks left until polling day, European election candidates are busy trying to spread their message throughout their vast constituencies, a challenge which McHugh says she relishes.

“It’s a great chance to get around the country and hear about what’s going on for people. There’s good people everywhere working to make their communities better, if we could bring that care and compassion to the higher levels of government we’d have a great country, and there’s no reason we can’t.”