Green agenda puts it up to Government big guns

The 17 questions posed by the Greens to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael last week represent major hurdles for the other two parties on many fronts – but there is no doubt which is the Beecher’s Brook.  It’s the demand that the Government ensures greenhouse emissions are reduced by seven per cent per annum between now and 2030 – in essence, halving emissions by the end of the decade.

So what does that actually mean in practice? The Government’s Climate Action Plan commits the State to reduce emissions by 3.5 per cent by 2030.

Some of the measures already agreed seem like a high bar. For example, there is a target of having one million electric vehicles on Irish roads by the end of the decade, an €80 carbon tax, and 500,000 homes improving energy efficiency to B2 standard.

On top of that there is already a big commitment to increase the percentage of renewable electricity to 70 per cent by 2030.

Technological advances will allow offshore turbines, which can be tethered in the deep waters of the Atlantic where there is an abundance of wind. The other new source will be solar power, both from farms and from households. The plan also calls for the timely closure of the coal-burning Moneypoint power station and Bord na Mona’s peat-burning plants.

Fianna Fáil’s climate change policies also go some of the way. It agrees to a €80 carbon tax, to 70 per cent renewables by 2030, a phasing out of fossil fuels, a fracking ban, a ban on diesel cars in cities by 2030, and the removal of fossil fuel cars in 15 years. It also wants a Green Homes Agency, to set up a pay-as-you-save scheme for home insulation.

But what is now being asked of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is to double those commitments between now and 2030.

How can that be done? The initial task will be made a little easier. Emissions could have fallen by up to seven per cent this year. The phenomenon where a majority of people work from home has opened up a new possibility, of home working and remote hubs.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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