Debate contribution: Renewable Electricity Generation Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr David Honeyford on 8 September 2026.

MLA

Mr David Honeyford

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

8 September 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Renewable Electricity Generation Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5673833

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I make it clear from the outset that I support the Bill and that Alliance will support it today. I will take my time, though, and walk my way through this, because we have been calling for this for some time, and I just wish that we had been here about two years ago rather than standing here today. Ultimately, the Bill is about something really simple: energy security. It is about taking control of energy by producing our own and the price that we pay for it so that families across Northern Ireland are protected from the massive spikes in energy costs that we have seen due to events thousands of miles away. We already had the warning on that when Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices went through the roof. Electricity prices followed, and businesses were hammered with energy costs. Families saw that on their home heating bills. The UK Government, in one year, spent £44 billion capping the price that we paid for energy, which was welcome and needed at the time. The taxpayer continues to pay back that debt, however, and the total spend over that time could have completely transformed the entire energy system. That was the warning and the point when we should have said that we should not leave ourselves exposed to international oil markets. At that point, the Department for the Economy should have acted with urgency. It simply did not, and we are here today with another crisis, with more uncertainty surrounding oil and gas and more volatility. How many warnings do we need before we take control and remove the exposure from our consumers? Ultimately, the Bill is about taking control for ourselves. I know that some in the House think that the answer is to drill for more oil and gas in the North Sea, but oil and gas are not ring-fenced for the family that lives in my Lagan Valley constituency regardless of whether it comes from the North Sea. They are sold by a private company on international markets at the international price, and there is limited or no benefit for consumers. An Oxford University report stated that the benefit of that at the bottom end is about 1% of the cost or £16 a year, so there is no real benefit for consumers here. We have to realistic, therefore, about what gives us genuine energy security, and that is to produce and be in control of our energy. That is our best hope: energy produced here that is not affected by the next crisis; energy that gives us control over long-term costs. I am really pleased that the Bill is with us because it is the start of delivering that.

I appreciate the intervention. I am not sure that Mike will appreciate being called "Steve", but that is for another day. International companies run our gas power stations. Companies come here for profit. I have no problem with anybody making a profit. What I have an issue with is when consumers have to pay the consequences of the price around the costs. I am not suggesting for one second that a company should not make a profit, I am not suggesting that. A ROC payment was a fixed payment as well. We are now talking about a cap and floor system here, which provides a lot more protection for consumers. I will get on to community benefit in a minute, but I am absolutely not saying that companies should not or cannot make a profit. That is not what I am saying; what I am saying is that the focus has to be on our people in Ballymena, Ballymoney, Lisburn or Moira.

We have a massive economic opportunity here, and the Bill opens up that opportunity. We should be a leader, because we have wind resource, solar generation and storage solutions. We have emerging research and development on tidal energy, hydrogen and biomethane. That is all coming through. We also have the all-island electricity market. We therefore have access to two markets, and we have two world-class universities and incredible colleges. We have an entrepreneurial spirit here that is evident in our engineering expertise, which we see especially in the west. We have businesses ready to invest. The legislation should mean new jobs, new research and new technology. It should mean investment in storage, in the grid and in generation. Energy is our economy. The Bill represents not just an energy policy but everything that drives us forward, brings opportunity and shows that the Executive can deliver for people. That is where my confidence wanes slightly, however. We are debating the Bill's Second Stage today because the scheme has been coming for years. In June 2024 — over two years ago — at the Economy Committee, when I asked the permanent secretary whether the renewable electricity support scheme would happen, his answer was clear. He said that all the legislation would be completed, and we would be in an auction for contracts for difference in January 2026. It was not a case of "maybe" or "hopefully". He said:

"Contracts will be let in January 2026."

January 2026 came and went, and we had no legislation and no contracts. In June 2025, the Minister told us that the auction would happen in the third quarter of 2026. This is the third quarter of 2026, yet we are not holding an auction but instead debating the Second Stage of primary legislation to allow it to happen. The Department made that its number-one action in its 2025 energy strategy action plan. By the Department's subsequent assessment, it "partially achieved" that. The achievement was carrying it into 2026, where the number-one action is, again, introducing this legislation. How are investors, businesses and the public meant to have confidence when there has been no plan and little action? I genuinely welcome the fact that the Bill has come before us at last, but, as Sinéad said, passing the Bill is not delivery. Publishing another action plan without actions tied to a time frame is not delivery. Holding another meeting is not delivery. The test of this will be in the renewable energy generation capacity that is built and connected and that produces cheaper, more secure electricity for our householders. As we move forward with the legislation, we need an answer to the question of when the auction will happen. When will we get that? More importantly, when will we first see energy that is created and supported by the scheme connected to our grid and generating electricity? Those are the dates that matter.

I will look at the all-island issue. I talk a lot in here about sharing this island. I will move on to the terms of the scheme. As Phillip mentioned, we have not seen a lot on them, but we do have some of the detail. I am worried that we are creating an investment border on this island. There is a 5 MW threshold in the terms that we have talked through at the Committee. Back in 2024, I specifically raised with the Minister why, when the threshold in the South is 0·5 MW, we are looking at 5 MW. I still do not understand why we are shutting down smaller projects before they have the opportunity to compete. For a farmer who is looking to diversify and wanting to add a wind farm to provide another income, for a local developer who has a range of turbines that might be on farms or other land in different locations or for the single-turbine 3 MW project, it is not that they will lose an auction under the scheme as designed but that they will not even get into the auction. A few miles down the road, the South has a renewable electricity support scheme that is available to projects below 5 MW. What are we doing? We have spent years developing an all-island electricity market: a single electricity market (SEM) on one island. I absolutely believe in sharing this island. I think that I talk more than any other MLA about working together in partnership to deliver better for people, but what we are doing is creating a border: a renewable investment border. Think of the absurdity of that. If an investor who looks at a 2 MW or 3 MW project in Northern Ireland cannot access the scheme, he will move his investment to the South, just a few miles away, or to Scotland. In fact, I have spoken to various local businesses in my constituency that have done just that. Why would we deliberately create disadvantage for ourselves? The Department has already acknowledged the absence of the support mechanism that has resulted in potential renewables going to GB, including Scotland, the South and elsewhere. We are finally creating the mechanism, yet we are going to design another reason for smaller investment to go south. That makes absolutely no sense to me. I get the Department's argument that it is about administration: a lower threshold means more applications and, potentially, more work for the Department. However, that is not a reason not to create the conditions for such investment. I get that there are genuine technical issues around controllability and visibility for SONI — I have spoken to it at length about this — and the single electricity market. That is fine — let us address it — but why should we design the policy around the administration? The policy should not be designed based on what is easier to administer. The Department's consultation material recognises that projects below 5 MW account for a meaningful part of renewable capacity currently. Off the top of my head, it is over 20%. We already have 20%, and we are creating disadvantage. My simple question is this: why not let that compete? Why should we decide before an auction even starts that we do not want that investment in Northern Ireland? This is about not only renewable scale but farm diversification, rural incomes and local developers and smaller businesses here. Paul mentioned —.

Yes.

I am struggling to say these words and I cannot believe that I am going to say them: I agree with Paul Frew. He makes the point that I am making, and I appreciate that. It worries me that we will exclude local companies, local investors such as farmers and those in rural communities and local developers in favour of large conglomerates. We need both. I am not saying that we do not need larger companies, but we should not be creating disadvantage for ourselves. We need to make this place as investment friendly as possible. We should not be building an investment border on this island through the design of our own scheme. The issue of the grid and planning barriers brings me to a wider problem. The support scheme on its own will not build wind turbines, solar panels, battery storage or whatever. You get renewable generation when you have three basic things: planning permission, a route to market and a grid connection. The Bill helps with one of those — the route to market — through the ability of a company to finance a project. That is good, and I welcome it. However, the other two are essential. I recently met ABO Energy, which is a large German company whose offices are based in Lisburn. It told me that it has £1·1 billion of investment that is sitting waiting to go into Northern Ireland. Some £600 million of the £1·1 billion is being held up by planning delays, and the remainder is being held up by constraints in the grid and delays in upgrading our grid. If you think about that —.

I thank the Member. I agree, and I will touch on that issue now. I will answer him in what I say. If we want money to come here, we need to have a system in place that delivers on all of that. I have said many times — Phillip mentioned it earlier, and I want to hear it from the Minister — that we need the Department to finally bring forward the master plan. We cannot let it become a developer-led project; it needs to be controlled, and the Department needs to lay out a pathway that shows the areas, partly for the planning system. The areas that are absolutely acceptable can be shown, and the areas that are environmental protection zones or areas of natural beauty can also be highlighted, which will bring the benefit of giving the community confidence, and it will also give the planners confidence to pass the permissions more quickly. The DFE master plan is essential for the Utility Regulator, SONI and NIE Networks to ensure that we are building a grid ahead of schedule to a plan that allows us to realise the benefits of the legislation, delivers for people and is Department-led, not developer-led. We know where a lot of the energy infrastructure should and could be, and it could be mapped out. The councils could, in the same way that they do their local development plans, show the areas where development will be positive, what it looks like and where it is not feasible, and that will give the community confidence.

Yes. Go for it.

Yes. RHI closed yesterday, which is positive. We will take the win because the Department has done a good job of closing the scheme. I am absolutely not here to bash the Department for the sake of bashing the Department; I am here to make sure that we deliver for people.

Too nice? I am always nice. We are constantly waiting for investment to arrive before we start thinking about the infrastructure that is needed to connect it, and that is my point. We do not need discussions about planning; we need reform to reduce the time taken to process applications. Maybe the Minister can bring forward any work that is happening with her colleague in DFI to enable the change. The legislation and the auctions are good, but the wider point will be how we connect to the grid. RHI has been mentioned, and there is a ghost that we need to address. We need to think about the learning from RHI because we have dispatch down rates of about 20% for energy that is created but not used. Without connecting it all together and having a plan, we will be, effectively, creating more energy without the infrastructure to use it, and the North/South interconnector is a prime example of that. We talk about the all-Ireland energy market, which is one single energy market, North and South, and we are connected through that every day, yet we spent around two decades trying to connect one part of an island to another with a copper wire, and two decades is two decades too long. If we are to become a renewable energy leader and develop more significant amounts of renewable electricity, we have to reduce the amount of dispatch down energy that is created and wasted. If we want to attract billions of pounds of investment, we have to put the basic infrastructure in place to allow the energy to be used, and the North/South interconnector is absolutely critical to that. There has been political opposition to the North/South interconnector over the years, including from the Minister's party in the South, but it was not alone. In this case, the South is the blockage to its being built. We cannot hold back on it. It has to be delivered on this island to allow the scale of renewables generation that we are asking to be built here.

We also talk about the Scottish connection. All that interconnection is absolutely vital to strengthen our security of supply and the ability to import when we need to. If we do not get it right, we are incentivising local renewable generation. If it does not hit that grid and is not used, there is potential to incentivise energy that is not used for the public good. That is a concern if the interconnector is not brought about. It brings me back to my point that we need a plan-led approach from the Department that allows the scheme to come forward, allows the planning system to be reformed to enable it, allows the grid to be built ahead of time and allows storage to be installed. We need the North/South interconnector. We need the connector to Scotland. We need one system, one strategy and one direction of travel; otherwise, we risk spending consumers' money on incentivising new generation or different generation that is not or cannot be connected. If RHI has taught us anything, it is that we have to properly think through the incentive. The incentive should not come before the consequences. They need to be thought through now. The system needs to be developed, and the whole system needs to be delivered at the same time. I want to pick up on who benefits, because the whole system has to start and finish with the consumer. The environmental benefits are essential. I do not disagree with that. The legal targets, as Phillip Brett mentioned, are there to be met, and we absolutely need to meet those. However, it all comes down to creating better for people and people paying less for their energy and the small businesses having certainty over energy costs moving forward and manufacturers looking at this region as an affordable place to invest because they have security of energy supply moving forward, be that in the west of the Province, which was talked about. That is what success looks like. Cap and floor is the mechanism to enable that. That is great, and I support that. The thing that I am concerned about and will flag now is clause 12(3). This is around where the money goes. The Bill says that the Department may make regulations requiring a benefit to be secured for customers. My question is around the word "may". If consumers underwrite the downside, they must also get the upside. That should not be an option. I want the Minister to explain the thinking around that, because I want to make sure that the benefit finds its way back to people in the communities. If we are asking communities to host turbines, solar farms, substation pylons, or whatever that infrastructure looks like, those communities should benefit. I welcome the provisions around community benefit, but we will tease out the detail of what that means, who gets it, how much they will get, how much it will reduce bills for local people in the community and how that will happen. Community benefit cannot be another promise that then gets defined down the road. It needs to be built in to bring confidence into this now.

Yes.

I thank the Member for that. That is the point that I am making. That is that the bit that we need to tease out. The Minister can address that. If we are asking a community to host it, the local community should feel the benefit of it. That is the point that I am making. I want to finish on a positive. This is about opportunity. I genuinely believe that it can become one of the biggest economic opportunities that we have here. For too long, we have imported energy and accepted whatever price the market told us. This allows us to control the cost and generate our own energy. For that, I welcome the Bill, Minister, and thank you for introducing it. We need, however, to look at the grid, the planning system and the delivery of the North/South interconnector, We need to secure that investment in jobs and build the skills around that so that colleges and the whole skills piece are linked within it as we see growth. We need to bring in that investment and, as I said in reply to Paul, bring the benefit back to the local community and consumers here. We have the wind, the technology and the opportunity. Let us now action the ambition to see that delivered. On behalf of the Alliance Party, I thank the Minister. If she could address those points, I would really appreciate it.

3,390 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:17 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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