The Green Party has welcomed Government plans to increase production of electricity from renewable energy sources, but says the scheme does not go far enough.
The Government intends doubling the amount of renewable energy used in the production of electricity to over 13% within the next four years.
The Minister for Communications, Marine & Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, said the plan was an essential part of delivering on our Kyoto obligations.
Announcing the plan, Mr Dempsey said this programme would reduce Ireland's dependence on imported oil by 2.5m barrels a year.
As well as reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuel, it would help delivering on Kyoto obligations which demand that 13.2% of our electricity is produced by renewable sources by 2010. That means supplying 260,000 homes with electric power by then.
The Renewable Energy Feed In Tariff Programme will see the construction of an initial target of at least 400MW of new renewable energy powered electricity generating plants.
Most of these will be wind farms but small scale hydro projects are also planned.
This additional capacity will require a capital investment in the region of €440m by developers and a total investment by consumers in the region of €120m over the next fifteen years.
