NESC Chairs Expert Discussion on Emerging Issues for Ireland’s Energy Security

• 28 February 2025
• Topics: Energy and renewables
• Types: News

On 25^th February 2025, the Department of Environment, Climate, and Communications (DECC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) brought together experts from across government, industry, academia, and regulators to identify the key security challenges, trends, and solutions under Ireland’s energy transition out to 2035. The full-day workshop involved four sessions, all with a focus on the power sector.

Dr Cathal FitzGerald, Senior Analyst at NESC, moderated the second session, on ‘Emerging Challenges in Ireland’s Power System Transformation’.

“NESC has made Ireland’s energy transition a key focus of its research over the last twelve months, and understanding the security of supply aspects, alongside sustainability, affordability, and economic resilience, has been central,” Dr FitzGerald said. The second session covered case studies, emerging network challenges, issues related to ancillary services and system security, and climate impacts and resilience of the power system. NESC then moderated an expert roundtable discussion.

Across the day, participants also considered Ireland’s broad energy and security challenges to 2035, a deep-dive on the demand-side outlook for Ireland, and key solutions to ensure energy security including policy, planning, regulation, technology, and market design.

“The Council’s role is to provide research, dialogue, and advice on strategic issues for Ireland, and the DECC/IEA gathering is the latest example of NESC engagement in dialogue with key actors in energy policy,” Dr FitzGerald said. “Ireland’s energy transition must be supported with ever-more sophisticated research and evidence, and a shared understanding of what transformation entails,” he added. “NESC is contributing to that evidence base as well as helping to build a shared view of what is needed to make the energy transition successful.”

Participants provided insights on and discussed the key priorities to ensure energy security. Findings from the workshop will serve as an essential input to an IEA publication focused on Ireland’s energy security, to be published later this year.

 

For more on NESC’s ongoing work in the area of energy transition, please click here.