Although Ireland’s efforts to meet its energy targets are going in the right direction, there are concerns habout the pace of the State’s energy transition.
Catherine O’Brien, energy transition lead at Accenture Ireland, points to “encouraging signs of progress”.
“Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 were at their lowest level in over three decades, with the largest single-year reductions in the energy and agriculture sectors,” says O’Brien. “Significant strides have been made in the electricity sector, with over 40 per cent of Ireland’s electricity supply coming from renewable energy, predominantly onshore wind energy, in 2023. Solar energy is now Ireland’s fastest-growing renewable energy source, with more than 100,000 rooftop installations connected to the grid.”
But while those results are generally promising, they fall short of where the Republic needs to be to achieve its climate goals.
‘A gas emergency would quickly turn into an electricity emergency. It is low-risk, but high-consequence’
The secret to cooking a delicious, fuss free Christmas turkey? You just need a little help
How LEO Digital for Business is helping to boost small business competitiveness
‘I have to believe that this situation is not forever’: stress mounts in homeless parents and children living in claustrophobic one-room accommodation
“While the results for 2023 are positive, it is unlikely that Ireland will meet EU and national 2030 targets without significant progress‚” says O’Brien. “We need to continue to accelerate transformation of the electricity sector as a backbone for decarbonisation of other sectors.”
In practice this means that, as things stand, the State will won’t get much beyond halfway in reaching its 2030 climate goals.
“We’re still massively falling short of our medium-term targets. Ireland has a 2030 target of 51 per cent emissions reduction – the EPA projects we’ll achieve 29 per cent. We’re still miles away from the target,” says Dr Aideen O’Dochartaigh, assistant professor in accounting at DCU.
“We’re now at the level of 1990 emissions but other European countries have achieved much more. There are huge issues in particular sectors. Agriculture and energy obviously stand out in that respect.”
For all the talk of ambitious targets, the practical methods to achieve them seem to be a core cause of the failings, according to Conor Minogue, senior executive for energy and climate policy at Ibec.
“There’s a lack of vision and strategy around energy. It needs lots of policy around storage. We want to see a strategy that links energy with economic development,” he says. “With wind in particular, there has been work done under the bonnet. The concern is that fewer projects are getting through the planning system. Only one wind farm was approved by An Bord Pleanála in the last quarter.”
O’Dochartaigh concurs, highlighting the lack of cross-departmental co-operation in addressing climate issues.
“The way carbon budgets and the approach to climate action are managed could be improved. Right now, specific actions are assigned to specific ministers and departments,” she says. “The big challenges cut across sectors. There’s a lack of policy coherence as well as there being policy conflict. A greater recognition of the cross-departmental nature of the challenges, with better structures in place to manage that, would help.”
By taking a cross-departmental approach, much of the red tape slowing down work needed to meet the 2030 climate targets could be dispensed with, says O’Dochartaigh.
“We need major changes to how we deliver infrastructure and the speed at which we do it. There needs to be something of scale to address industrial decarbonisation in particular,” adds Minogue. “The skills challenge there is also significant, particularly on the retrofit side.”
Energy, and the infrastructure it supports, is the sector O’Brien considers the most important to helping Ireland get back on track to achieving its carbon-reduction targets.
“Ireland needs to rapidly deliver onshore and offshore wind farms, solar farms, electricity storage projects and reinforce the electricity grid. Crucially, a mix of clean energy technologies will be needed to deliver on Ireland’s climate goals,” she says.
“Clean electricity will need to be complemented by the scale-up of renewable gases including biomethane and renewable hydrogen as we approach 2030. To deliver at pace, planning and permitting procedures for renewable energy projects must be streamlined and accelerated.”
While there are practical solutions to Ireland’s challenges in meeting its climate targets, the issues’ low priority on the Government agenda is of concern to O’Dochartaigh.
“It’s still being treated as a niche issue rather than the one that enables us to continue as a species. It’s amazing to me that they don’t see the ramifications, like parts of Dublin being under water in 20 years.”