New government has promised “decisive action to radically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels”

The Stop Climate Chaos coalition has outlined three key tests for the Climate Action Plan that Minister for the Environment Darragh O’Brien is bringing to Cabinet for approval on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Coalition, Oisín Coghlan, said “This is the big test for the new Government. The Programme for Government is full of fine words, committing to ‘decisive action to radically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels’. Simply put, this week’s Action Plan has to deliver that.”

The questions the Government and Minister O’Brien must answer are:

1. Does the plan close the emissions gap to Ireland’s legally binding emissions limits?
   EPA analysis [see note 1] last year found that the state’s emissions were not on track to meet either the legally binding emissions limits to 2025 and 2030 adopted on a cross-party basis by the Dáil or the 2030 limits agreed by the Government with our EU partners. This is referred to as the “emissions gap” and under the law the Minister is required to set out what “corrective measures” the Government is going to take to close the gap in the next Climate Action Plan.
   
   What emergency actions is the Government adopting tomorrow to reduce emissions in line with the first five-year carbon budget which ends at the end of this year?
   
   
2. Is the plan watered down or beefed up compared to the draft prepared for the outgoing Minister in December?
   Under the law, the updated Climate Action Plan for the year ahead is supposed to be published before the end of the previous year. So the 2025 Plan should have been published last December. It is understood the Department of Environment prepared a draft Plan for the outgoing Minister Eamon Ryan but it was decided the outgoing Government would not adopt it after the election. In the new Programme for Government the incoming Government reaffirmed its commitment to the climate law passed by the last Dáil and the emissions limits adopted under it. But have they beefed up the Climate Action Plan in line with the law or watered it down to appease the regional independents who replaced the Greens as the third leg of the Fianna Fáil - Fine Gael coalition?
   
   
3. Does the plan deliver on the Programme for Government commitment to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels?
   The new Programme for Government says “The Government is committed to taking decisive action to radically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels”, which it describes as expensive and imported, compared to Irish renewable energy.
   
   This language about fossil fuels is the strongest we have ever seen in a Programme for Government, stronger than the 2020 Programme agreed with the Green Party. 
   
   What “decisive action” will the Government outline in the new plan to “radically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels”? So far, the only big decision the Government has taken is to build an LNG import terminal.  And, although the Government has re-stated that LNG infrastructure should be state-owned as an emergency reserve, it scrapped the main policy instrument which told An Bord Pleanala not to permit private commercial LNG import terminals - i.e. those commercial terminals, especially Shannon LNG, which aim to increase Ireland’s gas use and therefore our “reliance on expensive imported fossil fuels.”

Notes

1. The EPA calculated that the 2024 Climate Action Plan would reduce emissions by 29% by 2030, compared to the 51% benchmark enshrined in the 2021 climate law. Crucially, it found that emissions in 2021-2025 would exceed the legally binding carbon budget adopted by the Dáil by 6% (19Mt CO2eq above the limit of 295Mt). And that emissions in 2026-2030 would exceed the legally binding carbon budget adopted by the Dáil by 47% (85Mt over the remaining budget of 181Mt).
   https://www.epa.ie/publications/monitoring--assessment/climate-change/air-emissions/EPA-GHG-Projections-Report-2022-2050-May24--v2.pdf