THE KEY details of the long-awaited Climate Change Bill will be disclosed today in tandem with the “carbon budget” by Minister for the Environment John Gormley.
Drafting of the Bill has not yet been finalised but it is expected to be published before Christmas.
Mr Gormley, the Green Party leader, is expected to use the delivery of the carbon budget to spell out the details of the climate change legislation, which the Greens want enacted before the dissolution of the Dáil.
The carbon budget discloses level of emissions of greenhouse gases over the past year and reveals how they relate to the Kyoto targets and the Government’s target of reducing emissions by an average 3 per cent each year. The Minister also details additional steps and policies that will be taken over the next 12 months to further lower emissions.
Until last year, the carbon budget was delivered a day after the main budget but it was decided this year that it would be better to hold it a week later.
Before departing for the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen last December, Mr Gormley published a framework for the Bill which gave an outline of the policies that might be contained in the legislation.
The framework proposed a legal obligation on the State to reduce, before 2050, the emissions by 80 per cent compared to 1990 levels.