It should come as no surprise that Ireland is projected to miss its 2030 climate targets, with a new report out today revealing that those targets are unlikely to be met even in the “most optimistic scenario.”
The report should provide a disillusioning assessment for the Greens of how we are likely to perform against the national Climate Action Plan and EU climate and energy targets.
William Walsh, CEO of the SEAI, said that even if Ireland “achieves the most optimistic scenario detailed in this report, and hits all Climate Action Plan targets, it is likely that gaps to our energy and climate obligations will remain”.
The report notes that even a massively scaled effort for technology deployment across all sectors will not be enough – and that it is now likely too late for Ireland to meet its legally binding 2030 obligations at EU and national levels. It also says that the national carbon budget is projected to be exceeded in all scenarios.
Even with additional measures, the State is projected to exceed the 2030 limit by 17%. With regard to compliance with EU targets, we are projected to miss the agreed verall 2030 targets for energy efficiency, renewable energy share and greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
The report is downright damning, Interim targets for overall renewable energy share for 2025 and 2027 are also expected to be missed in all scenarios.
Walsh said the findings highlight that a “significant expansion of incentives, information and regulation is required to enable us to comply with legally binding climate and energy obligations to 2030 and beyond.”
It is perhaps the perfect time to remember that some commentators and opposition TDs tried their best, during the summer, to alert us to a report indicating that Ireland faces the unpleasant prospect of a €5 billion bill for missing the EU climate targets we agreed to.
Those hefty targets were set out by our government in the Climate Act of 2021, which legally commits the Irish government to achieving a 51 per cent reduction in the State’s carbon emissions by the year 2030.
This target has never been credible. A Environmental Protection Agency report from August, for instance, found that even if all the measures in the coalition government’s climate action plan were implemented, emissions would fall by only 29 per cent by 2030 — which is of course far short of the 51 per cent legally binding target. It was never anything but lunacy that our government committed this country to cutting emissions by 2020 at a staggering 26 times the rate of the world as a whole.
Our country is cracking at the seams. Housing, health services, energy and public transport are all buckling under pressure – and the only reason we’re not feeling the full force of the government mismanagement is that we are awash with corporation tax with multinationals, but the clock is ticking on that cash scource. Our country is barely livable, evidenced by the droves of young people boarding one-way flights to Australia and Canada and the UK. Imagine what €8 billion could do for this nation?
Our government has conducting a fantasy about climate change whilst refusing to address the bread and butter issues, with a health service on its knees and people sinking into poverty, with the prospect of buying a home nothing more than a dream for most young people. The lofty climate change targets our leaders willingly signed up to only serve to expose the hubris and folly of this government – and it is taxpayers who will ultimately pay the price.
The lunatics are running the asylum, and this has been made clear over and over again. Who can forget that policymakers proposed culling 200,000 cattle in Ireland by 2025, while at the same time, 25 per cent of EU beef exports come from Brazil. While preaching to us about environmentalism and sustainability, this greedy government has deliberately pushed up the cost of diesel and petrol cars, whether through permanently escalating fuel taxes or road tax or VRT. The cost of living has been rocketing for more than two years, and the government has consistently added to prices with extra Carbon taxes and the PSO levy.
It was abundantly clear that the government’s Climate Change Bill would put huge costs on families and farmers, and yet only one party in the Dail – Aontu – voted against it.
The failure of the 2030 targets can be filed alongside the many other examples of our government’s insistence on over-delivering and under-performing. Let us not forget that Ireland also missed its 2020 targets and had to purchase “credits” from other countries as a result. The targets set out by our government are now far beyond what is credible. The government’s ambitions border less on heroic and more on recklessness.