Dr. Tom Ryan:

The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has statutory responsibility for a range of issues around greenhouse gases, in particular, the compilation of Ireland's national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, and reporting to the European Union and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCC. We also have responsibility for the development and provision of national projections for emissions which take account of the effects of national and European policies and measures. We implement the EU emissions trading scheme and have responsibility for the associated permitting, monitoring and reporting verification activities. We also manage the EU emissions trading registry in Ireland, including credit auction monitoring. The agency also provides the secretariat for the Climate Change Advisory Council and other supports, funding for climate change initiatives and emissions research. While we have statutory responsibility in these areas, there is very much a collaborative approach to inventory compilation and projection estimates. We work in co-operation with other agencies and bodies that provide essential data for these inventories and modelling for the projections. Many of these organisations are represented today - the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI; Teagasc; the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI; University College Cork, UCC; as well as the relevant Departments.

Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide which arises mainly from the combustion of fossil fuels, methane and nitrous oxide which arise from enteric fermentation in the gut of ruminants, gases from cows, in other words, fertiliser application to land, livestock manure storage and land spreading. There is another family called the F-gases that mainly arise from refrigeration and air conditioning systems.

Each of these various gases has different global warming potential.

The current published greenhouse gas inventories are for 1990 to 2014, inclusive. The revision of these is under way and will include data from 2015. It is a complicated process but work will be finalised on them in the coming weeks. They will be published as revised provisional inventories.

In the breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions by sector in 2014, agriculture was the largest with 33.1%, transport was the second largest with 19.5%, followed by energy with 19.1%. Aggregating agriculture, energy and transport, they accounted for 72% of Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions in 2014. In 1990, transport accounted for 9.1%, an increase of 10%. At the same time, the residential emissions share decreased from 13% to 10% and the agricultural share from 37% to 33%. If one takes the absolute values rather than the percentages, total emissions in 1990 were 56.17 megatonne of carbon dioxide equivalent. In 2014, it was 58.25 megatonne. In that period, it represents a 3.7% increase in total annual emissions.

Total greenhouse gas emissions comprise two categories, those that come under the EU emissions trading system, EU ETS, and those covered by the effort sharing decision, also known as the non-ETS sector. The non-ETS sector includes agriculture, transport, excluding the aviation sector, the built environment, which incorporates residential, commercial and institutional, and waste, essentially landfills. When ETS and non-ETS figures are combined, in 2013 and 2014 Ireland was comfortably within its compliance targets.

The current emissions projections to 2020 are based on the latest inventory reference year which is 2014. They take account of the available energy forecasts at the time, based on macroeconomic assumptions supplied by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. They also take account of agricultural data provided by Teagasc in December 2015, such as projected herd numbers, fertiliser usage, drainage - all the elements taken into account in Food Wise 2025. When one takes the projected non-ETS emissions and compares it to annual emission allowances to 2020, we will be in breach in 2016 and 2017. However, the accounting rules allow for us to take account of overachievement where we have not admitted as much in greenhouse gases as we are actually allowed. If this cumulative approach is taken, we are likely to breach those limits in 2018 and 2019.

We project forward emissions in two ways. The first is with measures, and that takes account of established Government policies, incentives and regulations which are being implemented. Examples of that are carbon tax, VRT, motor tax biofuels obligation scheme and building energy efficient schemes. Then there is the additional measures scenario for projections which takes into account policies, incentives and regulations announced by the Government but not yet implemented. These would include policies such as renewable energy targets or energy efficient targets set out in policy documents like the national renewable action plan and the national energy efficiency action plan. This relates to targets about percentage renewable fuels in transport, deployment of electrical vehicles, renewables for heating and those sorts of policies. Under both scenarios, projections show Ireland will breach its 2020 targets in advance at 2018 and 2019.

It should be noted these are projections. There are always ongoing processes such as annual audits which revise both the inventories and the projections. These will all be taken account in the new inventories and projections for 2017.

The EU Climate and Energy Framework 2030 sets targets to cut emissions in EU territory by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. In the new effort-sharing regulation proposal for the non-ETS sectors to be agreed for 2021 to 2030, it is proposed Ireland will reduce emissions by 30% below 2005 by 2030.

The new system introduces certain flexibilities we can avail of potentially, two of which I will mention. The first is the use of credits from carbon sinks, the LULUCF sector. This is capped at 5.6% of 2005 emissions. I will discuss LULUCF shortly as we were specifically asked to mention it. The other flexibility is around the use of EU emissions trading system, ETS, allowances, and that usage is proposed to be capped at 4% of 2005 emissions.

To reflect on LULUCF, some members will be very familiar with what is a wonderful acronym; others not so. It stands for land use change and forestry. It is important in the context of climate policy because forests and agricultural lands cover a substantial part of the EU territory and hold large sinks of carbon, preventing that escape of carbon into the atmosphere. On the other hand, draining peat land, felling forests or ploughing up grassland generates emissions. Members can see that actions such as afforestation or the conversion of arable land into grassland can protect carbon stocks or result in carbon sequestration or carbon capture. Members can see that policy choices around the LULUCF sectors can have a positive or a negative impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Under current projections, Ireland will likely not meet the 2020 targets even under the banking mechanism and with additional measures. We see in the data insufficient decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions, which increases the challenge for us of meeting our medium European Union and long-term national targets, which demand an aggregate reduction in CO2 emissions of at least 80% compared to 1990 levels by 2050 across the electricity generation sector and the built environment and transport sectors, as well as carbon neutrality in agriculture and land use.

I thank the Chairman. As Mr. Lynott said, we are happy to take questions from members. If we cannot answer them now, we would be happy to return with additional information in the future.