Minister for Climate Darragh O’Brien has asked the European Commission if a flexible approach could be taken to companies in Ireland that are unlikely to fulfil obligations under upcoming climate targets.
In a letter to European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, O’Brien raised doubts about companies’ ability to meet carbon capture and storage (CCS) targets required by 2030.
O’Brien wrote that Ireland had no law permitting carbon storage and “limited sites that may be suitable for CO2 geological storage”.
“Ireland is not well placed to be a front-runner in CCS development,” he said in the letter released under Freedom of Information laws.
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O’Brien said the EU’s Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) would establish penalties for companies that did not comply with CCS requirements.
“While CO2 storage will contribute to environmental targets, I would like to explore if there are any flexibilities as to how we reach our climate ambition,” he wrote.
CCS, also called Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS), involves capturing carbon emissions at source before they escape into the atmosphere and storing the gas indefinitely.
Storage options are at an early stage of development, but some countries are using or planning to use undersea or underground chambers where gas or oil was previously extracted.
In Ireland, the depleted Kinsale gas field off the southwest coast has been identified as a potential storage site, but the idea has not been pursued.
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In its last update to the European Commission on its progress implementing the NZIA, the Government said it had no carbon capture or storage projects, no CCS strategy, no carbon transport plans and no agreements with other countries to accept carbon from Ireland.
However, it does have a CCUS taskforce set up to examine all these issues. The taskforce was due to report to the Government at the end of last year.
An update published last week said consultants had been engaged to help the taskforce and that the Department of Climate and Department of Enterprise were “developing a CCUS Vision Statement”.
The “indicative timeline” for publishing the vision document was the end of 2026.
The first phase of the NZIA applies only to oil and gas companies operating in the EU. They are jointly required to capture and store 50 million tonnes of carbon per year by 2030.
In Ireland, the act applies to Nephin Energy and Vermilion Energy which are active in the Corrib gas field. Both companies submitted reports to the European Commission in recent weeks.
Nephin said it intended securing agreements with carbon storage operators “yet to be identified”.
Those agreements would be in place “from 2030 for a period of five years or until cessation of production from the Corrib Gas Field, whichever is sooner” and would store 550,000 tonnes of carbon annually.
Vermilion said it and its sister companies which operate in several EU countries were investigating the possibility of developing a storage project at their own onshore oilfields in France to store 1.87 million tonnes of carbon annually.
However, it said the Vermilion companies “do not acknowledge having any obligation under Article 23 NZIA”, the section of the act which confers responsibility on oil and gas producers.
Beyond oil and gas companies, Ireland intends relying on CCS and CCUS for “sectors where decarbonisation is particularly challenging”.
These include cement and chemicals manufacturers and “other energy intensive industries”.
Last week’s update says CCUS in Ireland “could involve retrofitting existing cement, power plants, and waste-to-energy facilities with carbon capture capabilities, as well as building necessary compression, transport and storage infrastructure”.
This could include “creating dedicated port areas for international shipment of carbon for industrial use or geological storage elsewhere”.
