A chara, – The Paris agreement on climate change should be a prod in the backside to the Government to grasp the policy opportunities to get back on track and achieve national targets for renewable heat (12 per cent) and renewable transport (10 per cent). Technologies are available and already proven in other jurisdictions. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland estimates fines of up to €600 million a year for missing binding renewable energy targets.
Ireland is only half way to meeting 2020 renewable heat target. A third of our energy use is for heating, but electricity dominates policy debate. Previous supports expired in 2008 and there has been minimal market activity since.
The Government has concluded that a renewable heat incentive (RHI) is the most cost-effective way to achieve targets. An RHI must be prioritised and properly resourced, but it is already well behind schedule.
An RHI would displace €120 million a year of fossil fuel imports and encourage indigenous supply of wood biomass. Not only that, matching locally grown biomass (and there is plenty in the country) with local energy demand would support over 3,000 new jobs. There are 175 members of the Irish Bioenergy Association with experience and capability to deliver a vibrant new industry.
There’s also a big opportunity for development of renewable “green” gas from anaerobic digestion, especially in the agri-food sector.
This would feed combined heat and power units, also for injection into the national grid and to make compressed natural gas for transport.
Political urgency and policy development resources are what are missing now. – Is mise,
MICHAEL HEGARTY,
General Manager,
Irish Bioenergy Association,
Enterprise House,
O’Brien Road,
Carlow.
Sir, – The COP21 agreement has been hailed as historic. To me it reads like it has given India and China a licence to build 100 coal-fired generating plants a year for the next 25 years. If this agreement is fully complied with by its signatories, which of course won’t happen, it will not stop anthropogenic CO2 emissions from continuing to rise nor will it have any measurable effect in reducing the rate of change of the global average temperature.
However we should all be duly grateful, as now the planet has been saved the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the University of East Anglia Centre for Climate Studies can be disbanded, and the UN can stop holding vast climate summits every few years. The mainstream media can save money by laying off its climate correspondents and Greenpeace can stop bothering us, the polar bears and the pandas. – Yours, etc,
DAVID WHITEHEAD,
Kinvara,
Co Galway.
Sir, – The Government need not have any fears about achieving the targets recently agreed in Paris. If it employs Volkswagen, it will surely pass the tests! – Yours, etc,
BRIAN BUCKLEY,
Oughterard,
Co Galway.