Ireland to miss 2030 climate targets but ‘marked improvement’ seen, O’Brien says
Vivienne Clarke
Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien has said that while Ireland will 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”.
Projections by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show an overall reduction of 25 per cent in emissions is possible, but that is only about half of the 51 per cent drop 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.
The EPA also warns that the reduction could be as little as 13 per cent if current climate policies are pursued for the next four-and-a-half years and pledges to do more do not materialise.
The ”positive side” according to O’Brien, was that 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’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.
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.
“With the additional and 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.
Ireland was the number one country in Europe for 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.”
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