Stormont’s strategy to reduce energy use and cut greenhouse gas emissions has achieved just 1 per cent of its target over the past four years, despite costing £107 million (€123 million).
No matter how bad this sounds, the details are worse.
The Department for the Economy, responsible for developing and implementing the strategy, has employed a team of 134 people for the task, at an annual wage bill of £8.2 million.
If this were a business it would be in the top 2 per cent of companies in Northern Ireland by both staff and revenue, yet in almost half a decade it has achieved effectively nothing.
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That is the conclusion of a report this week from Northern Ireland Audit Office, which described the failure as “staggering”.
By the genteel standards of public sector auditing, this is the equivalent of a headbutt.
The Audit Office was unable to establish the value for money of most of the £107 million, partly because some of it was spent before the strategy came into effect, but mostly because the department cannot distinguish between planning to do something and actually doing it.
The strategy requires producing annual “action plans”, each containing over 20 “actions”, with a report on progress at the end of every year.
The Audit Office notes many of these actions “simply outline the purpose of the action” or “outline what the department intends to do”.
[ Stormont is slow, afraid of new thinking and costly, says reportOpens in new window ]
Examples include “develop a plan for the decarbonisation of Rathlin Island” and “publish an electric vehicle infrastructure action plan”.
Is planning an action plan an action?
The three annual reports published so far fail to explain if any actions have been achieved. The Audit Office asked the department why and was sniffily informed the answers were in “the explanatory text”.
The Audit Office responded this was still “not always clear” – another Glasgow kiss to the department’s furrowed brow.
Worse still, actions have been carried over partially or randomly from one year to the next. Few seem to be properly aligned with the strategy’s three key aims of doubling the green economy, generating 80 per cent of electricity from renewables and cutting energy use in buildings and industry by a quarter, all by 2030.
In short, 134 civil servants have spent years producing waffle – and it is not even good or consistent waffle.
[ How to fix the Northern Ireland economyOpens in new window ]
One problem singled out by the Audit Office is excessive consultation with stakeholders, leading to “consultation fatigue”, with the department receiving few responses but still going through the elaborate motions.
Of course, consultation is essential when you have no idea what you are doing.
All of this is no isolated fiasco. Although work on the strategy began in 2019, it became a legal requirement after Stormont passed the 2022 Climate Change Act. This requires most Stormont departments to make plans on how Northern Ireland will reach net zero by 2050, with interim targets of a 48 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and a 77 per cent reduction by 2040, compared to 1990 levels. The three key aims of the energy reduction strategy are also specified in this law.
It has quickly become apparent that the 2030 target, at least, is unattainable. Trying to meet it, or pretending to try to meet it, is causing chaos and paralysis across government. In June, the High Court in Belfast blocked construction of the A5 dual carriageway because the Department for Infrastructure could not explain how it would comply with the Act.
Assembly members fear other big road projects are now on hold; concerns were raised last week about the Enniskillen bypass.
Last month, the same department was criticised in another Audit Office report for passing off road resurfacing schemes as new greenways to meet the Act’s target on “active travel”.
[ What’s behind Northern Ireland’s fake greenways controversy?Opens in new window ]
Also last month, a UK environmental regulator found the plan from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs cannot meet the 2030 target. The department’s Alliance minister was already under attack from the farming lobby for going too far. It is politically impossible to go further.
Reading the latest Audit Office report, and surveying the Act’s wider impact, the overall sense is of a system drowning in nonsense. Most criticism of Stormont is of the struggle of its parties to work together, but the Climate Change Act was a product of successful co-operation: a compromise between the DUP and the Greens, backed by every other party except the Traditional Unionist Voice.
The trouble it has caused points to deeper problems with powersharing. All-party government aims to do everything instead of doing a few things well and mistakes consensus and fine sentiments as achievements in themselves.
Last year, the Scottish government admitted interim targets in its net zero legislation were undeliverable. It lowered them and introduced more flexibility in how they are measured. Stormont must do the same.
