The Republic is on course for a climate reckoning, according to a fresh report by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) and the Climate Change Advisory Council.
It estimates that the State will incur financial penalties of between €8 and €26 billion by 2030 if it continues on its climate trajectory, which will mean headline emissions reduced by 29 per cent against an EU-agreed target of 51 per cent.
Even if the State follows through on its “ambitious” Climate Action Plan, it will still be paying fines of between €3 and €12 billion under the bloc’s emissions trading system (ETS) whereby states buy and trade emissions permits. But the report warned that the plan was not being delivered “at the scale or the speed required”.
Some countries – Spain, Greece and Portugal – are on course to exceed their climate targets and will be in a position to sell ETS permits, boosting their finances in the process.
The report paints a grim picture of the State’s efforts to curb emissions, switch to more renewable energy sources and move to a carbon-neutral position.
It noted that the Republic is now at the bottom of the EU league table in terms of the per capita emissions gap. In other words, it is the least likely member state to hit its 2030 targets and therefore Europe’s number one climate laggard.
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The report offers three possible solutions. First, a €7 billion investment in the national grid to facilitate a bigger influx of renewable energy. This probably needs to happen anyway to facilitate a bigger economy with a larger population. It will certainly be needed if we are to maintain or even approximate the same level of multinational investment as the previous decade.
The second solution relates to transport emissions and the low take-up of EVs (electric vehicles). A €4 billion investment to reduce the price of EVs to below €15,000 would enable the State to reach its target of having 845,000 private EVs on the road by 2030. It also proposed rewetting 80,000 hectares of peatlands for €1 billion or less, which it said could also deliver “massive reductions in emissions at a low cost”.
The State faces a stark choice: either it knuckles down and starts to hit the targets or get ready for hefty compliance costs.
