Minister defends Government’s climate policies to meet emission targets

Environment Minister Eamon Ryan has defended the Government’s climate policies, saying it can meet its emission targets despite a report stating that Ireland will not reduce greenhouse gases emissions as set out under law.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said the momentum around reducing emissions is “not fast enough”.

Minister for Transport, Climate, Environment and Communications Eamon Ryan said that while it is a “real challenge” to meet the targets, he is “absolutely convinced” Ireland will reduce carbon emissions.

Under Ireland’s 2021 Climate Act, it has set a target for a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030 when compared with 2018.

On a European level, Ireland’s latest target is to limit greenhouse gas emissions by at least 42% by 2030, compared with 2005.

The EPA said Ireland will achieve only a reduction of up to 29% by 2030, against the 2018 baseline for the national target.

Mr Ryan told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action that it is a challenge reaching the targets as the “population is growing”, which he claimed is not taken into account in the European process.

“Our economy is growing very fast compared to other European countries. But we can and will do it,” Mr Ryan added.

“We have to think here long term, it isn’t just getting to 2030. We know the European Commission and others are the saying we need to meet a 90% reduction by 2040.

“The real challenge is how we set long-term change over the next two to three decades so that we do deliver Ireland as a zero carbon country and I’m absolutely convinced we can and will do that.”

Social Democrats’ Jennifer Whitmore said: “I think the elephant in the room today in light of the EPA report and the publication of their analysis is the fact that your government is not going to meet its climate targets.

“It’s not going to meet the climate targets required under the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) and it’s not going to meet the climate targets necessary under the (2021 Climate) Act either.

“This EPA report … was the exact same analysis from the EPA last year, it’s the second year in a row where the EPA analysis shows that if your government implements every single policy measure set out on the Climate Action Plan, 100% implemented in absolute full, you will only meet 29% reduction of the 51% required.

“It is clear that your government is failing when it comes to being ambitious enough in the policies and making sure that we have sufficient policies to meet our targets.

“You have had a year and there has been another iteration of the Climate Action Plan, and in that year you still have not managed to even put down any additional policies that would result in even 1% additional reduction in emissions.”

However, Mr Ryan said that recent Government measures are not included in the modelling, including the introduction of a biomethane strategy and a new solar support project.

“I believe these can help us close the gap. In the last year, we introduced a major new transport demand management modelling exercise and plan in terms of how we will, in transport, help close that gap,” the Green Party leader added.

“Some of the measures, take for example what we plan to do in Dublin city centre this summer, EPA have not modelled that because they don’t find it easy to model those sort of projected changes.

“There are a whole variety of different actions, additional actions, which government have introduced in the last year which will help close the gap.

“(The EPA) doesn’t include all the additional measures that government is looking at.”

Sinn Fein TD Darren O’Rourke told the committee: “One of the significant indicators we have is that the path we’re on at the minute is not delivering, minister, so there has to be a fundamental review of the full approach.

“The Climate Action Plan isn’t delivering on the targets that are agreed. In fairness, there’s broad political consensus in terms of the targets themselves, which we shouldn’t take for granted.”