Stat Chat: A new first look at Ireland’s Energy Supply
A new report from SEAI helps illustrate key details of Ireland’s energy supply in 2023 and the security of that supply.
SEAI’s Energy Statistics Team works to provide a ‘farm to fork’ description of Ireland’s energy – where it comes from, where it goes, and how it’s used.
SEAI has just added a new report to its ‘First Look’ series of publications. First Look publications aim to rapidly disseminate the key energy insights that can be extracted from SEAI’s data-releases, to address the need for timely and trusted data to inform evidence-led energy policy and determine the pace of progress against binding energy and climate targets.
First Look: Energy Supply and Security of Supply
The new First Look: Energy Supply and Security of Supply report builds out a detailed picture of where Ireland’s energy came from in 2023 – what we produced in Ireland, what we imported, and where we imported it from.
The primary data source for these insights is the 2023 interim national energy balance, published by SEAI on 1st of May 2024, with supplementary data taken from SEAI’s monthly updates on electricity, gas, and oil supply, and data publicly available from the Eurostat database. The new report is full of easy-to-understand plots and graphs, some of which SEAI hasn’t explicitly illustrated before, including:
- Imports by country of origin
- Refinery dependence of key oil products
- Disaggregated import and export of electricity with Northern Ireland and Great Britain
- Electricity generation from imported and indigenous sources
- Biofuel blending in road diesel and petrol
First Look: Energy Supply and Security of Supply in 2023
This builds out a detailed picture of where Ireland’s energy came from in 2023 – what we produced in Ireland, what we imported, and where we imported it from.
The breakdown of Ireland’s national energy supply is important - if the ‘raw’ energy that makes up Ireland’s ‘total primary energy requirement’ is not renewable, then the energy that makes its way into our homes, businesses, and vehicles cannot be renewable.
The new report highlights Ireland’s dual dependency on fossil fuels and imported energy. In 2023, 82.8% of our primary energy requirement came from fossil fuels, and we had a 78.5% energy imports dependency. Ireland imported all its coal and oil in 2023 and over three quarters of its natural gas needs. The interactive data panel below lets you explore the breakdown of Ireland’s total primary energy requirement (TPER) by energy product and supply stream for different years.
The good news is that Ireland’s dual energy dependency can be addressed by a single solution - adding more indigenous renewables to our national energy supply. That solution really is a win-win. It helps us cut down on emissions from carbon intensive fuels and helps us enhance our security of energy supply by better shielding us from international market shocks and supply disruptions. In a sense, adding more indigenous renewables helps us get the best out of what Ireland does have, rather than us trying to make do with what we don’t have.
Renewable energy
In 2023, 87.6% of Ireland’s renewable energy came from Irish sources like wind, solar, biomass, hydro-electricity, etc. As Ireland modernises and decarbonises its energy demand – moving from gas and oil boilers in homes to heat-pumps and district-heating; and moving from petrol and diesel fuelled cars to EVs, public transport, and active travel – more and more of that demand can be satisfied by indigenous renewables.
Shifting the demand and supply of Ireland’s energy away from imported fossil fuel to indigenous renewables requires nothing less than a paradigm shift – a fundamental change to how we do things. We have a legal obligation to achieve a 51% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to stay within our carbon budget.
Positive progress
The good news is that along with all the challenges there are genuine opportunities - our geography means that Ireland is well positioned for wind generation, both on land and sea. And we are also making positive strides towards significant capture of sunlight (through solar PV panels on rooftops and solar farms) and ambient heat (through heat pumps), too.
As the First Look report shows, 2023 was a record year for wind, solar PV, and ambient heat in Ireland - we generated 11.7 TWh of electricity from wind, 0.6 TWh of electricity from solar PV, and we installed 32,000 heat pumps in Irish homes. In 2023, electricity generation from solar PV accounted for 1.9% of Ireland’s electricity supply with 64% of our solar generation coming from utility scale solar farms and 34% from rooftop solar panels. The interactive data panel below lets you explore data on Ireland’s currently installed wind and solar energy.
Targeting a national, renewable-led energy system is one of the four priorities set-out in Ireland’s energy security package ‘Energy Security in Ireland to 2030’, published by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications last November. To achieve this, Ireland’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) has set capacity targets of 8 GW for solar PV and at least 14 GW of wind by 2030 (9 GW onshore and ≥ 5 GW offshore). At the end of 2023, Ireland had 0.7 GW of solar PV installed capacity and 4.7 GW of onshore wind installed capacity.
While Ireland has made good progress in the last decade, we need to significantly accelerate the roll out of renewable technology and capacity to reach our CAP targets. We hope that evidence-based energy publications, like this First Look report will help keep policy makers, journalists, businesses, and the Irish citizenry better informed with timely updates on the gaps that need to be closed for Ireland to stay on track to its 2030 targets and beyond.
Whether you are a prospective energy project developer or a homeowner and you want to be a key part of the sustainable energy transition, you can learn more about what licences, permits and grants are available to you on the SEAI website.
Learn more about licencing for renewable energy projects Learn more about grants for homeowners