Ireland’s Climate Goals 2030
Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency recently published it’s projections for our climate goals for 2030. The report is not good, and seems especially bleak when the minister announcing the report has just abandonned 1 Gigawatt of solar projects in RESS-2.
Does anyone think that we have a failed environment minister implementing a failing climate plan with unrealistic objectives? Perhaps.
Two of the EPA’s climate goals jump out at us for further analysis. These relate to housing (a basket-case in Ireland) and transport.
2030 Climate Goals for Residential Emissions
The housing industry in Ireland has been in disarray for at least 20 years. First there was a fantastic boom where plumbers became millionaires overnight. Then there was an almighty bust where everyone went broke and the IMF came and sold off our national treasures.
Having sold huge swathes of housing stock to vulture funds and real-estate investment trusts, we have seen year after year of poor construction numbers, unconscionable rent-hikes, producing a persistent housing crisis, an epidemic of homelessness, and now there is a crisis on the materials supply side brought on by external forces.
In summary, the construction industry is banjaxed.
Apparently this is the industry to which the EPA entrusts a major part of our climate strategy, forecasting a fantastical 680,000 heat pumps installed … in addition to 500,000 homes retrofitted … in the next seven years. Just to reiterate … this represents major works on 1.18 million homes in Ireland … within the next seven years.
Let’s consider our recent housing performance just to benchmark the objective.
In the five years from 2011 to 2016 the CSO tells us we built 33,436 new houses in TOTAL. That’s 6,687 homes PER YEAR. We eagerly await the new figures from the CSO for house building in Ireland, and hope that the new figure for housing starts is many multiples of the last one.
Even if the industry were building 30,000 homes per year for the next 7 years, and it was mandatory to install a heat pump in each home … the EPA target is still short by 470,000 heat pumps.
To reach the 680,000 heat pumps figure by 2030 we could install 4 or maybe 5 heat pumps in every new home built to 2030, and also make it unavoidable or perhaps mandatory for homeowners to have to retrofit their homes (with a heat pump).
Banks will be giving away free heat pumps every time you open a new account. And the SEAI will have to run free DIY heat pump installation courses to accomplish this figure.
There seems to be a real lack of critical thinking at the EPA if climate targets like this can be set and measured without accounting for the fundamentals required to implement those targets.
Let’s not even mention how many foreign observers are sniggering at this component of our climate strategy.
2030 Climate Goals for Transport in Ireland
On transport emissions, the main tenet of the EPA strategy is electric vehicles. It’s the obvious solution, and entirely within reach. One million electric vehicles by 2030. It’s not clear if the 1M target includes electric scooters, electric bicycles, electric quads, electric forklifts, electric telehandlers or is it just electric cars & electric vans?
Once we reach the target ‘what then’? How do we power them all?
One million EV’s by 2030
Who’s paying the electric bill?
Last autumn/winter we had the TSO (Eirgrid) announcing potential future blackouts, stresses on the national grid, and how datacentres are obliterating much of our national output.
At the same time we had the wind industry shrugging their shoulders at the surprising lack of wind power, and it was even mooted to bring decommissioned or offline assets back online to meet the shortfall.
Now we hear the wind industry boasting about how much wind they produced in May? Blah blah blah.
We have to ask the question whether anyone at the EPA has really accounted for how much new and additional electricity generation we are going to need for 680,000 new heat pumps and 1,000,000 new electric vehicles?
Is the national grid resilient enough to meet our future needs?
Even more important for consumers we have to ask, “Is our national portfolio balanced” enough? The answer is, “No, it isn’t“.
The bias against solar energy in Ireland
We can’t really do anything about how unrealistic or narrow focussed the EPA targets are or whether Ireland meets it’s emissions goal. What we take issue with is the persistent and irrational bias against solar energy in Ireland.
Solar Energy is the answer to our existential crisis. The whole world can see this.
The International Energy Agency sees it. World leaders like Antonio Gutierres have recommended that governments remove obstacles or simply get out of the way.
However, while while everyone else is going solar, Ireland is doing the opposite.
A severely biased RESS is going full-tilt for offshore wind, entrusting our future to large corporations who will happily fleece their customers at the first opportunity and shrug their shoulders when things go awry.
One thing is for certain – which is that nobody among the political class has a clue what the climate will be like in 10 years, 20 years or 30 years from now. There are too many variables. And yet the wind ideology seems completely ingrained in the political class in Ireland.
Kudos to the wind lobby.
Among the stated strategic objectives of the RESS process was to front-load our climate response for electricity production in Ireland. Words like “accelerated” and “early delivery” were used. Apparently this objective has been abandoned in RESS-2 where 700 GWhrs of production went unallocated, and 1 GWp of solar projects simply got ignored. What happened?
2030 Climate Goals for homeowners
If you see the current climate strategy failing like we do, then set your own climate goals.
Our suggestion is that you take matters into your own hands. Make your own decisions for your own future, bring your community along with you, and don’t leave the climate emergency to bureaucrats.
If you want to power your new EV, go solar.
If you want to power your new electric heating system, go solar.
If you want to power your next data centre project, go solar.
Instead of removing the supports for solar PV (which they are doing) the government should be removing the obstacles. One example which seems counterproductive was for the SEAI to remove the solar battery grant before homeowners have been shown how batteries can benefit them.
Small things like planning permission for solar panels are important to homeowners and should be immediately waived to encourage uptake. If the oireachtas was serious about the climate emergency, they would surely fast-track and even expand the Planning and Development Bill 2021.
This government should increase supports for homeowners – instead of decreasing them. Likewise they should increase supports for agriculture – and yet the main soundbite from our climate targets is “agriculture emissions”.
If this minister, and the EPA have their way, then Ireland’s agriculture industry will pay a heavy price for Ireland’s climate targets. Considering how wrong they can be on the specifics, we really need to examine their arguments closely.
Let’s just be clear though … every kilo of butter, cheese, beef, pork or lamb that’s erased from our GDP will be replaced by some other country like Brazil, with it’s brutalist, reputedly savage animal welfare practices, and a complete disregard for greenhouse emissions or climate change proven by their inhuman destruction of humanity’s rainforests.
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