Ireland & CO2
"However it is achieved, a thorough reorganisation of production, consumption and distribution will be the end result of humanity’s response to the climate emergency and the broader environmental crisis."
– Walden Bello
On the 18th of April 2018 the Citizens Assembly published this report outlining the actions needed to tackle Climate Change. If you want to see what actions we the people recommended to the Government – it’s all here.
On May 9th 2019 Ireland became the second country in the world to declare a Climate Emergency; there were only six TDs in the Chamber at the time but….. The Dáil also agreed to endorse all the recommendations of the Oireachtas Climate Action Report. The government published its long-awaited “Climate Action Plan 2019”. See the PDF here.
The plan outlines the Government’s climate ambition over the next decade, and aims to make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change. While stopping short of targeting full decarbonisation, the government has “sought a pathway to 2030 which would be consistent with a net zero target by 2050”
This is going to require a rapid and seismic shift in society and we have no chance of achieving this without the people of Ireland onboard completely. So, how do we go from this…..
“Ireland’s status as a laggard in reducing carbon emissions has been confirmed by a new CSO report, which shows the Republic has the third highest emissions of greenhouse gases per capita in the EU” – Extract from an article by Kevin O Sullivan – Irish Times – 26/08/ 2019
“The Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has consistently stated that Ireland is “not on the right trajectory to meet longer term EU and national emission reduction commitments”
With existing measures in place, the EPA projects an overall increase from current emissions levels of 1% by 2020 and 6% by 2030. The UN states that to prevent warming beyond 1.5°C, we need to reduce emissions by 7.6% every year from this year to 2030.
10 years ago, if countries had acted on this science, governments would have needed to reduce emissions by 3.3% each year. Every year we fail to act, the level of difficulty and cost to reduce emissions goes up.
The Paris Agreement
Nations, including Ireland, agreed to a legally binding commitment in Paris to limit global temperature rise to no more than 2oC above pre-industrial levels, but also offered national pledges to cut or curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The initial pledges of 2015 are insufficient to meet the target, and governments are expected to review and increase these pledges as a key objective this year, 2020.
European Green Deal
On 13 December 2019, the European Council decided to press ahead with the plan for a European Green Deal; a set of policy initiatives brought forward by the European Commission with the overarching aim of making Europe climate neutral in 2050. On 15 January 2020 the European Parliament voted to support the deal as well, with requests for higher ambition. The flagship initiative of the European Green New Deal is a climate law which commits the bloc to slash emissions to net zero by 2050, and a plan to increase the 2030 emissions reduction target to at least 50 percent and “towards” 55 percent from the current 40 percent goal.
"Climate change is a fundamental problem that we must solve and not merely pass on to the generations to come…We can’t let our children and grandchildren look back on this critical period in time and say that we failed them."
– Mary Robinson
Ireland’s Performance to Date
Ireland is one of the EU’s worst offenders in terms of carbon emissions and faces fines of more than €250m for missing targets. Ireland was ranked 41st out of 57 countries in the table, just above Poland.
The target Ireland agreed with the EU was to reduce national emissions by 20 per cent. Our emissions in 2020 will be 25 per cent higher than the target we agreed. The financial penalty will be substantial.
A slight improvement in Ireland’s rankings occurred in 2019, largely due to progress in renewables and the governance arrangements outlined in the government’s Climate Action Plan, however our failure to tackle agricultural, transport and residential emissions was criticised and our progress to date is well off the required Paris trajectory.
For more information on the topics above see:
What are Irelands greenhouse gas emissions? from the EPA
Renewable Energy in Ireland Report PDF from the SEAI