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The minister defends the government’s policy despite forecast emission targets

Posted on by darion

Environment Minister Eamon Ryan defended the government’s climate policy, saying it could meet its emissions targets despite a report finding Ireland would not cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with regulations.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said the pace of emissions reductions “is not fast enough.”

Minister for Transport, Climate, Environment and Communications Eamon Ryan said that while meeting the targets was a “real challenge”, he was “absolutely confident” that Ireland would reduce its carbon emissions.

Ireland’s Climate Act 2021 sets a target of 51% reduction in emissions by 2030 compared to 2018.

At European level, Ireland’s latest target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 42 percent by 2030 compared to 2005.

The EPA stated that by 2030 Ireland would only achieve emissions reductions of up to 29% compared to the 2018 national target baseline.

Ryan told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action that meeting the targets was a challenge due to “growing populations”, which he believed was not being taken into account in the European process.

“Our economy is growing very quickly compared to other European countries. But we can and we will,” Ryan added.

“We need to think long term here, not just to 2030. We know that the European Commission and others say we need to achieve a 90% reduction by 2040.

“The real challenge is how we set up long-term changes over the next two to three decades so that we actually create Ireland as a zero carbon country, and I have every confidence that we can and will do that.”

Jennifer Whitmore of the Social Democrats said: “I think the elephant in the room today in light of the EPA report and the publication of their analysis is that your government will not meet its climate targets.

“It will not meet the climate targets required under the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP) or the climate targets needed under the Climate Action Act (2021).

“This EPA report… was the exact same analysis that EPA conducted last year. This is the second year in a row that EPA analysis shows that if your government implemented every policy measure outlined in the Climate Action Plan at 100% full implementation, you would only get a 29% reduction from the required 51%.

“It is clear that your government is failing to be ambitious enough and to make sure we have enough policies to achieve our goals.

“A year has passed and the next iteration of the Climate Action Plan has taken place, and this year you still have not managed to establish any additional policies that would lead to even an additional 1 percent reduction in emissions.”

However, Ryan said the modeling did not take into account recent government measures, including the introduction of a biomethane strategy and a new solar energy support project.

“I believe they can help us close this gap. Last year, we introduced a new, important model for managing transport demand and planned how we will help fill this gap in transport,” added the leader of the Green Party.

“Some of the measures, such as what we plan to do in Dublin city center this summer, the EPA has not modeled that because it does not find it easy to model those kinds of anticipated changes.

“There is a whole range of different measures, additional measures, that the government introduced last year that will help plug this gap.

Ireland will not meet emissions targets even in the best-case scenario – Epa

Ireland

Ireland will miss emissions targets even in the best…

“(The EPA) does not include all of the additional measures the government is considering.”

Sinn Féin TD Darren O’Rourke told the committee: “One of the important indicators we have is that the path we are on at the moment is not delivering results, Minister, and therefore there needs to be a fundamental review of the full approach.

“The Climate Action Plan does not deliver on agreed targets. It must be acknowledged that there is a broad political consensus on the goals themselves, which we should not take for granted.”