UN report on carbon dioxide emissions disputed

Environment Correspondent

THE Department of the Environment has disputed a United Nations report which suggests that Ireland's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have increased by most 22 per cent in recent years, putting it near the top of an OECD table, just behind Portugal and Denmark.

The Department said figures quoted in the latest UN World Economic and Social Survey were based on British Petroleum's Statistical Review of World Energy for 1991 and 1996 and, at least in Ireland's case, contained "substantial inaccuracies".

It said the official data reported by Ireland under the UN's Climate Change Convention showed that CO2 emissions had increased from 8.4 million tonnes in 1990, to 9.2 million tonnes in 1995, a rise of 10.5 per cent, or less than half of the percentage figure cited by the UN.

"It is not clear why the newly-published UN survey does not use the official national data reported under the Framework Convention on Climate Change," it said, adding that a table published in the Economist last week "much more closely reflects the Irish position".

The UN survey was immediately seized on by the Green Party TD, Mr Trevor Sargent, who said the new Coalition Government would have to "seriously consider energy taxes as the only way in which Ireland can combat its disastrous emissions record".

Mr Sargent said rising CO2 emissions were the result of a booming economy which had led to increased use of energy from fossil fuel sources and a "huge increase" in the amount of traffic on the roads, with a record 110,000 net cars sold last year.

However, the Government's programme contained only "mini mum commitments" on energy reduction and he feared it would continue along the same "blind track" as its rainbow predecessor, which had resisted efforts to bring fossil fuels within the EU's excise tax regime.

The UN report says policies to limit CO2 emissions in OECD countries would be "insufficient" to bring about the necessary worldwide reduction "if the developing countries double their present one-third share of global energy consumption (and therefore of CO2 emissions), by the year 2020".

Although last week's special session of the UN General Assembly in New York failed to agree on this issue, it is still expected that some agreement on an international protocol to reduce emissions will be reached at a UN conference next December in Kyoto, Japan.