Debate contribution: Renewable Electricity Generation Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Dr Caoimhe Archibald on 8 September 2026.

MLA: Dr Caoimhe Archibald
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
Date: 8 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution (made as a minister)
Business: Executive Committee Business
Heading: Renewable Electricity Generation Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5673908

Text

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
I thank Members for their contributions to the debate. I have found them very helpful. I enjoyed hearing Members' reflections on the Bill and welcome the broad support for it. I thank Diana for her work on the Economy Committee and wish her well in her new role. I welcome Mike back to the Economy Committee and look forward to working with him.
The Bill is about providing the necessary legislative foundation to enable us to attract the investment that will be required to meet our renewable electricity ambitions while ensuring that we have the appropriate protections and safeguards in place for consumers as we create the sustainable, secure and affordable energy future to which we all aspire. I will address a number of points that were raised in the debate, and I am happy to take interventions from Members if I miss anything, because I have a lot of notes written down that I will try to get through. First, on the timing of the Bill's introduction, let me say that nobody is more disappointed than I am that it took as look as it did to get us to this point. There was certainly no intention to mislead Members in any way. We believed that we would be able to use other primary legislation as the basis of this, but, on further legal advice, we realised that that was not the case. By the way, I actually think that having our own primary legislation is a good thing, because it enables us to design it to meet our needs. Some Members, including the Chair of the Economy Committee, mentioned the number of delegated powers in the Bill. I affirm again that it is our intention, particularly for the elements of the Bill on terms and conditions, financial matters etc that will be introduced by regulations, to do that by the draft affirmative procedure so that the Committee will be able to fully scrutinise the regulations and the Assembly will have to approve them. I refer to the recent experience that we had with the RHI closure regulations, where we really listened to the Committee and took on board its views. That is my intention going forward, and I give that commitment to the Economy Committee as we move through this. I will pick up on a couple of points that were made about different elements of the legislation, whether it is the technologies or the lower threshold. David, I know that you are particularly exercised about that, and, by they way, so was I. It is my intention that we talk about that as the first option, and, beyond that, we will look at it again. Like you, I believe that we should look at where small-scale generation has a real role to play. That links very much to some of the other issues that were raised in today's debate about the necessary investment in our grid infrastructure to enable the connections that will need to be made to facilitate the different renewable technologies being onboarded. We want to get as much of that online as quickly as possible, which is the intent behind the threshold. I have a real commitment to community energy. One thing that is in the energy strategy action plan for this year is a community energy framework. We are working on that as well. We need to make sure that we tie those things together, because, to meet the 80% by 2030 target, a lot of things still need to come together. That includes our storage policy. We intend to publish our policy statement on storage this year. We have also just published the east-west interconnection policy. Certainly, that is my intention. Mr Honeyford has made the point on many occasions, and the Chair has made the point, about the overarching framework that we are working within. We are working on an energy policy position statement, which we intend to publish before the end of the year. That will set the direction of travel to 2030, and we are working beyond 2030 as well. We are making sure that we have a framework and a direction of travel that is clearly communicated to everyone. Several Members mentioned the economic opportunity, which I very much agree with. We now have a green economy that is worth £1·5 billion. That represents 60% growth in less than a decade. We have huge opportunities to build on that as we invest further in renewables and tie that with our broader economic vision. Planning issues will be key in ensuring that we can deliver the infrastructure investment that we need to see. I am engaged with my ministerial counterpart on that. The policy on low carbon and renewables was published last year. Obviously, that is new and is being worked through. We also have the planning improvement plan and are beginning to see a positive impact from that. We need to see a continued emphasis on ensuring that our planning system supports the ambitions that we all have. We are all very conscious of the need to bring communities along with us. I share Mr McCrossan's view that we cannot in any way diminish environmental protection or the right of communities to have their say, but we have to make sure that we take on board concerns and address them as speedily as possible in order to ensure that we move forward at the necessary pace. That brings me on to the community benefit element. I do not know whether it was Mr McCrossan who raised the point last week at the Committee about the legislation's use of the phrase, "The Department may make regulations". An explanation for that was given at Committee last year: it is about the specifics of the community benefit from the particular auction and technologies at a point in time. If it is offshore, for example, there will not be houses around the facility that you will make payments to, but, if you have onshore wind or solar technologies, the intention is that the households in those communities will receive that benefit. That is, I believe, spelt out in the legislation.
I thank the Member for his point. Obviously, the Agriculture Minister is sitting here. I have no difficulty in saying that there is Executive agreement on the need for us to deal with planning on a more consistent and speedy basis. That is why the Infrastructure Minister has put in place the planning improvement plan. As I said, we are beginning to see improvements in the time that applications are taking. I think that we are all very conscious that resources need to be behind that, particularly in the different agencies that have those responsibilities. That is work in progress; there is no point in dressing it up as anything else. We need to keep a continued emphasis on that. I am looking through my notes to see whether I have missed anything important. Kate has left the Chamber, but we have the green skills action plan, which was developed along with industry. The emphasis is very much on ensuring that we have a pipeline of people coming through to support the different elements of decarbonisation and the energy economy. From a departmental perspective, having energy sitting alongside skills is particularly useful.

1,227 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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