The Government has been accused of missing carbon emissions targets and “ripping up climate protections” amid a “famine of ambition” on climate action.
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik made the claims in the Dáil in the wake of the latest projections from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA’s projections show an overall reduction of 25 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions is possible but that falls well short of the 51 per cent reduction required by law.
Ireland will achieve at best just half of the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions it is committed to make by 2030, the latest forecast shows.
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The EPA also warned the reduction could be as low as 13 per cent if current climate policies are pursued over the next 4½ years and pledges to take further action are not fulfilled.
On Wednesday Minister for Climate Darragh O’Brien told RTÉ Radio that while Ireland would not meet targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, there has been a marked improvement in certain areas and the targets will be reached in the “early 2030s”.
Bacik raised the findings of the EPA report with Taoiseach Micheál Martin during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil.
She argued that the Green Party’s exit from Government “marked the death knell of Fianna Fáil’s ambition on climate” and said it was “laughable” that this year’s Climate Action Plan will not be published until the third quarter of the year.
Bacik accused the Government of “dismantling crucial protections for our environment”, highlighting the Critical Infrastructure Bill which she said “fundamentally undermines the Climate Act, allowing big infrastructure projects to bypass climate considerations entirely”.
Martin said he “very strongly” rejected Bacik’s assertion that the Government was not taking climate seriously and he added that her “reference to the Greens not being in Government is false”.
He said “the fundamentalist” and “the perfect” is “always the enemy of the good”.
“We will achieve far more on climate than perhaps your approach or even at times the Green Party approach because we do need to bring people with us,” he said.
Martin insisted the Government’s “commitment hasn’t lessened in terms of climate”.
Infrastructure cannot be built in many instances “because environmental law is being weaponised at every turn”, he said.
Bacik responded by saying that the national children’s hospital building project has had “chronic delays” and “that wasn’t due to climate or environmental concerns”.
Martin said the “bottom line” was that “Ireland now has the lowest level of greenhouse gas emissions in 35 years”. He said this reduction had happened despite a 1.5 million increase in population, more than one million new homes and more than one million extra vehicles on the road.
“We have decoupled economic growth from this issue,” he said.
Responding to the EPA projections during his radio interview, O’Brien said the “positive side” was there had been a marked improvement in certain areas.
“It’s going to be very difficult to hit that 2030 target. But what you see within the figures that the EPA have produced independently is we again have been able to decouple economic growth from emissions.
“And we’re seeing continued emissions reductions, particularly across energy,” he told RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with David McCullagh show.
There had been significant changes in transport and in residential with a 200 per cent increase in applications for retrofitting, he added.
[ Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions to fall by just half of the amount pledgedOpens in new window ]
The Minister said he welcomed the EPA’s report as independent data was important, but the report did not include the increase in EV sales in the first quarter of this year.
“Yes, we need to do more and we can do more, particularly on energy. So if you look at the projection the EPA have there, of where now about 50 per cent of our electricity is generated through renewables, they’re projecting that will be about 60 per cent by the end of the decade,” he said.
“With the additional acceleration measures that we brought in, that’s more likely to be between 68 per cent and 70 per cent by the end of the decade.
“So what I’m saying is, yes, 2030 is going to be incredibly difficult. I don’t expect us to hit the 2030 target, but we won’t be far off it. And we’ll be reaching that target early in the 2030s.
“One of the big reasons for that is offshore renewables. We’d a five-gigawatt target for offshore wind electrified by 2030. That is not going to happen. Our focus is getting them into construction by 2030, because we have had to go through a planning process that has delayed that.”
There was a lot of confidence in the sector that the target would be achieved, he said, adding that Ireland was the number one country in Europe for the integration of renewables into the grid. “We’re actually number three in Europe for storage, only behind Germany and Italy in relation to battery storage, which we need to be able to save that energy to dispatch it at the right time.”
