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Clintel Foundation
Date: 14 November 2026

“I support target setting,” he said, “but a target without a plan is merely a wish.” Quoting the late energy expert David MacKay, he added that policymakers should focus on “numbers, not adjectives”.

The energy trilemma

O’Brien’s central criticism is that Ireland has forgotten the basic “energy trilemma”: security of supply, affordability and sustainability. These three objectives are interdependent, he argued. Concentrating too heavily on one inevitably puts pressure on the others.

Ireland’s record on emissions provides only limited justification for the sacrifices being demanded, in his view. Global greenhouse-gas emissions increased by around 15% between 2010 and 2025, while China’s emissions rose by more than 30%. Europe’s emissions fell by more than 20%, partly because energy-intensive production moved abroad. Ireland reduced its emissions by about 8%, but accounts for only around 0.1% of global emissions.

Meanwhile, global primary energy demand increased by roughly 22%. Fossil fuels still supplied about 82% of the total, down from 87% in 2010, while wind and solar increased tenfold.

Ireland has nevertheless made substantial progress in electricity generation. Fossil-fuel generation has fallen from around 80% to roughly 40% over 15 years, while renewables have risen to around 40%. But O’Brien argues that adding renewable generation is only part of the challenge.

“You don’t buy from a generator,” he said. “You buy from a power system.”

The hidden costs of renewables

A system dominated by variable wind and solar requires backup generation, grid reinforcement and additional services. Ireland currently has around 550 MW of backup capacity. After a capacity-auction failure in 2022, emergency generation had to be arranged at a cost O’Brien puts at around €700 million.

The mismatch between renewable capacity and actual electricity production is another problem. Variable renewable capacity increased from about 1,500 MW to more than 7,000 MW over 15 years, but the energy produced by that capacity increased by only around 1.5% per year. O’Brien attributes the difference largely to network constraints: the grid frequently cannot absorb all the available generation.

“We have bolted a distributed variable generation resource onto a grid that was designed for the polar opposite,” he said.

The consequences are increasingly visible in electricity prices. According to O’Brien’s presentation of Eurostat data for the first half of 2026, Irish household electricity prices were the highest in the EU, around 33% above the EU average including taxes. Excluding taxes, the difference was approximately 73%. Industrial electricity prices were more than 60% above the EU average.

The long-term trend is equally striking. Between 2010 and 2026, pre-tax household electricity prices rose by about 58% in the US, 73% in the EU, 47% in France and 156% in Ireland.

O’Brien rejects the idea that cheap renewable generation automatically means cheap electricity. Levelised cost of electricity, he argued, measures the cost at the power plant gate and does not include the wider costs of integrating intermittent generation into the system.

Targets without the infrastructure

Ireland’s planning system is another major source of concern. O’Brien pointed to delays in transmission and distribution infrastructure and argued that ambitious renewable targets were established without ensuring that the necessary grid could be built in time.

He was particularly sceptical about Ireland’s offshore-wind ambitions. Although successive targets have envisaged thousands of megawatts of offshore capacity by 2030, he noted that, as of late 2026, none of the projects had reached a final investment decision.

“The one thing I can absolutely guarantee you is there won’t be a single megawatt commissioned offshore in Ireland by 2030,” he said.

O’Brien also highlighted the practical consequences of inadequate electricity infrastructure. Ireland has far fewer EV charging points per 100,000 inhabitants than leading European countries, while €50 million worth of electric buses reportedly sat unused in Dublin for two years because they could not be connected to the grid.

Security of supply

O’Brien is equally concerned about Ireland’s dependence on imported energy. Natural-gas consumption has remained broadly flat for 15 years, while around 85% of gas is now imported through a single supply route in Scotland.

He questioned why Ireland refuses to license its own oil and gas resources and criticised the slow development of alternative gas-import infrastructure. Germany, he noted, built three LNG terminals within two years after the Russian gas crisis of 2022. Ireland, by contrast, has moved much more slowly.

Electricity imports are also increasing. Interconnectors are useful, O’Brien stressed, but they also create dependencies. Ireland’s growing reliance on imported electricity raises questions about how much of its energy security it is effectively outsourcing.

He contrasted Irish policy with Germany’s approach to coal. Germany gave itself 18 years to end coal and lignite generation, while Ireland initially planned to close its 900 MW Moneypoint coal plant within seven years. When EirGrid warned that closing it could threaten electricity security, the deadline had to be extended.

In January 2026, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reportedly said that coal plants might have to remain operational longer: “I’m not ready to gamble with the core of our energy supply just because we agreed on some deadlines years ago.” O’Brien saw this as an example of pragmatic energy policy.

A warning from Britain – and a lesson from Canada

O’Brien also pointed to a recent UK audit warning that renewable generation had expanded faster than the grid, increasing constraint costs. The UK’s costs rose from about €2/MWh in 2018 to €8/MWh in 2025 and could reach €25/MWh by 2030 if grid investment does not accelerate.

Ireland was already at approximately €24/MWh in 2025. O’Brien therefore asked why Ireland has not produced a comparable warning or estimate of future costs.

He ended by referring to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. In July 2026, Carney acknowledged that Canada’s existing emissions targets were no longer feasible, that emissions caps were driving prices too high, and that the country needed major grid expansion and planning reform.

O’Brien argued that Ireland needs a similar dose of realism. With 328,000 electricity accounts reportedly in arrears, affordability is no longer an abstract issue.

His final verdict was blunt: Ireland had “slammed our foot on 100% on climate decarbonization” while abandoning affordability and security.

“There’s no magic solution,” he concluded. Ireland should abandon “amateur target setters and wishful thinkers”, put professionals in charge of developing a realistic energy plan, reform infrastructure planning and align decarbonisation targets with both the physical speed of grid construction and what consumers can afford.

“Follow Mark Carney,” O’Brien advised. And, above all, he urged policymakers to remain open to all technological options and start planning for them now.

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