
February 2016 43
Climate Legislation
Climate Change legislation promised.
Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 delivered, to mixed
reviews. Long on aspirations, short on the targets and enforceability that
characterise most other legislation. Climate Advisory Council, heavily laden
with economists, convened.
Home Energy
Promised to double funding for home energy efficiency & renewable energy
until end of 2013, then replace it with ‘pay as you save’ scheme.
75% fewer homes being retrofitted than five years earlier.
Green Jobs
Ireland to be established as ‘a renewable manufacturing hub to attract interna-
tional and domestic investment’. Energy co-ops to be supported in order to
‘make it easier for small- scale renewable energy providers to contribute to our
renewables targets’.
Promises long forgotten. No renewable energy ‘hub’, and worse, the feed-in
tariff for small-scale energy producers, rather than being expanded, has
been scrapped by the ESB, under government guidance.
Transport
We recognise the need to rebalance transport policy to favour public
transport…’.
Bus and rail fares increased. Private car sales return to pre-2008 levels.
Traffic chaos returns to M50. Instead of reducing, emissions from Ireland’s
transport sector set to rise by 12% between 2013 and 2012, according to
SEAI data.
PROGRAMME FOR GOVERNMENT COMMITMENT ACTUAL PERFORMANCE -
Three woefully inefficient peat-burning
plants in the midlands only remain open thanks
to the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy on
electricity bills siphoning some €120 million a
year into these plants – that’s around €2.5 mil-
lion a week in subsidies to produce the dirtiest,
poorest grade and most ecologically damaging
form of energy possible. In 2014, this State-
supported madness exceeded the total PSO
support for the production of clean electricity
using renewable energy.
Meanwhile, the government has extended
the life of these monuments to parochialism
and incompetence by another 15 years, which
is nicely timed to coincide with 2030, by which
time Bord Na Mona will have completed its dec-
ades-long assault on some of Europe’s richest
ecological regions, as well as what used to be
our most efficient carbon sinks. Quite where
this fits with the government’s new climate leg-
islations that “builds on existing efforts to
decarbonise the economy”, it’s difficult to even
begin to fathom.
To understand the true objectives of the 2011
Programme for Government, it’s necessary to
look elsewhere. For instance, under the section
headed ‘Growing the agri-food sector’, the
seeds of the agri-steamroller later known as
Food Harvest 2020 are clearly set out: “Further
expansion and innovation in our dairy and meat
sectors will be a key priority under a reformed
CAP and we will work with industry to achieve
more intensive levels of production”.
Note the blunt language above. Such sly
euphemisms as “sustainable intensification”
hadn’t yet entered the lexicon of spin – this was
a straightforward declaration of expansion and
intensification. Later in the same section, it men-
tions that Bord Bia will be given a number of
marketing tasks, including developing “value-
added Irish food brands, such as an eco brand”.
The State food board has been an enthusias-
tic ambassador of a ‘greenwashed’ Irish food
sector. Irish agriculture currently accounts for
well over a third of Ireland’s GHG emissions,
and this will, according to EPA estimates, rise
to 45% by 2020. In a stunning act of moral lar-
ceny, one small, albeit politically untouchable,
sector of the Irish economy has sequestered vir
-
tually half of the entire nation’s emissions
budget.
Its boosters, notably outgoing Agriculture
minister, Simon Coveney have made it abun
-
dantly clear that our most emissions-intensive
forms of agriculture (beef production and
dairying) are planning to continue to ramp up
as the national dairy herd expands
dramatically.
What jars for these agendas is the pesky EU-
mandated EU emissions cuts (20% by 2020,
rising sharply to 40% by 2030). This exposes
Ireland to fines that even An Taoiseach admits
may run towards half a billion euro per annum.
Just as the banking industry’s gambling losses
were ‘nationalised’, it seems clear that the beef
and dairy sectors are using similar political
clout to ensure the hapless general taxpayer
once again picks up the tab.
Anyhow, if all else fails, it’ll be Enda The Peni-
tent, cap in hand, off to Brussels later this year
to ask the big lads if they’d be able to do us a
dig-out on all these fines…by rewriting the
emissions rules as they might apply to Ireland,
in light of the ‘special position’ of our agricul-
ture sector (which is already, lest we forget, in
receipt of EU taxpayers’ largesse to the tune of
over €2bn cash transfers annually).
Enda Kenny completely misread the mood of
the COP21 Climate Conference in December. He
breezed in to Paris to tell journalists not to pay
heed to the high-sounding blarney in his formal
speech. This backfired spectacularly, leading
to some frantic back-pedalling as the gravity of
the Paris Agreement came to be better under-
stood. Whether this has helped loosen the iron
grip of corporate lobbyists on a new Fine Gael-
led coalition remains to be seen.
The Climate Mitigation
Plan has been safely
kicked into that distant
place known only as
“later in 2016”
Climate Legislation Report Card