Ireland is spending €1 million every hour to import fossil fuels as we face into not one but two winters where meeting our energy needs is going to be a major challenge, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
"This is a big crisis, and this is a crisis which we expect to last", Cillian O'Donoghue, Policy Director at Eurelectric, said.
"So not just this winter, but also next winter", he told the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs, adding that the crisis "will probably last at least eighteen months".
Eurelectric represents the electricity industry at the European level, with members from 32 states.
"We will have a hard winter next winter", Dr Paul Deane, with UCC's Environmental Research Institute, agreed.
He warned that our continued reliance on gas coming through the UK - because of the absence of storage capacity here - was ill-advised.
Any damage to those pipelines would be "catastrophic", Dr Deane warned.
He told the committee that the Corrib gas field "is declining", and provides only a quarter of our gas needs.
Mr O'Donoghue noted that the energy crisis is primarily a result of a collapse of gas supplies from Russia, which normally provides 40% of Europe's gas.
Russia is currently delivering less than a quarter of that amount, he revealed.
But European states have still managed to fill their reserves to 91% "with Russian gas".
He warned that "next winter we will not have this option".
The price industry is paying for gas has risen more than five-fold, up 532%, he said.
While households have been "feeling the pinch" they "haven't been fully exposed" to those increases, he added, with their costs rising 84%.
Mr O'Donoghue detailed the "quite dramatic" impact the increases are having on industry.
He revealed that half of Europe's aluminium smelters have shut down since the crisis began, and the high cost of re-opening those plants means they likely to remain closed.
"Ireland is one of the most fossil fuel-reliant countries in Europe", Dr Paul Deane said.
Fossil fuels provide the vast majority - 86% - of our energy needs.
More than three quarters of those carbon-heavy fuels (77%) were imported last year, at a cost of €1m every hour, Dr Deane added.
"Ireland used to be a leader in offshore wind, back in the early 2000s," he said, but now "we are back of the pack", which is "disappointing".
