Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best to be brief and deal with the main issues, as I see them, around passing this Bill and instituting a ban on fossil fuel exploration in Ireland. First, I will say a few words on why I believe this Bill is needed. We have witnessed here in Ireland and globally the effects of rising CO2 levels on our climate. The rise in the number of extreme weather events, deadly heatwaves, prolonged droughts and record-breaking rain, are well documented. Records are broken routinely. The five warmest years in the global record have all come in the 2010s. Globally we are 1o Celsius above the pre-industrial average temperature and heading fast to 1.5o Celsius. Climate change is creating millions of climate refugees globally and impacting with devastating consequences on the lives of millions more. It is also threatening the earth's biodiversity and accelerating the sixth great extinction event in the history of our planet.

I have been struck that in this debate opponents of this measure have not sought to cast any doubt on the issue of climate change. On one level this is welcome. There are few climate change deniers who will publicly challenge the scientific consensus on the cause and effects of climate change. I note that the submissions from IBEC, the Irish Offshore Operators' Association, IOOA, and others all talk of the need to take action. They all accept the fact that our climate is changing, that the future of energy production must be renewable and that we must reduce our emissions. However, I can take little comfort from this widespread acceptance because there is a disconnect between accepting the science and the facts, and the unwillingness to take the steps needed.

We will hear today from Professor John Sweeney and Dr. Amanda Slevin, who will put the climate emergency into some context, and will look at our licensing regime.

Next week, the witnesses will look at the feasibility of renewable energy replacing fossil fuels on the scale needed and in the time necessary. The message from these witnesses is that radical action is possible and such radical action and policies are necessary. The numbers do not add up for those advocates of continuing fossil fuel exploration. We cannot burn the proved reserves of oil, gas or coal globally and hope to reach the Paris targets of rises of under 2° Celsius from pre-industrial levels. This Bill is the first step but only the first. It does not pretend to solve the crisis or reduce emissions by itself but it sends a clear signal that Ireland is part of a global movement that is prepared to take action and deal with the use of fossil fuels.

We can look at the provisions of the Bill and what it seeks to do. Once CO₂emissions globally are above 350 parts per million, this Bill will ensure that the Minister does not issue any licences, undertakings or leases for the exploration or extraction of fossil fuels in Ireland. This Bill would place Ireland at the front of a global movement to tackle climate change. The continued use of fossil fuels at the levels currently being used globally will mean we will use the global carbon budget within decades and fail to limit temp increases to under 2° Celsius. This would be a death sentence for large parts of humanity and large sections of the Earth's biodiversity. If this does not constitute an emergency, I do not know what the definition of an emergency should be. In acknowledging this, the Bill puts down a clear marker that the future cannot be based on fossil fuels if we wish to make the planet a habitable site for humanity and other species.

I will deal briefly with some of the criticisms and arguments against this measure. The first is that it will harm energy security, undermine jobs in the industry and make us reliant on Russian gas in a volatile political climate. I do not accept that there is any security, in the context of energy or otherwise, on a planet that will be 2° Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial level and which is heading, on the basis of current trajectories, to being 3° Celsius or 4° Celsius warmer within the next generation or two. However, let us be honest about our licensing regime as it stands and about our current and predicted use of gas and other fuels. If there is a significant find in Irish waters, which is unlikely, it would come under existing licences issued under the 1992, 2007 or 2014 licensing terms. Under those terms, companies are not required to sell resources back to State or use Ireland as a base for servicing. The State will receive no royalties on any such find and our tax regime is acknowledged by all, including the Department, as among the most generous for companies anywhere in the world.

We do not use Russian gas, nor will we in the future even under current demand trends. We meet over 50% of our gas needs from indigenous resources at Corrib and Kinsale. The balance of our natural gas requirement is imported from Britain and our gas from Britain comes via a system of sub-sea pipelines from Scotland. Britain has four main sources of gas, including its own offshore North Sea natural gas, which provides 35% of the gas; the Norwegian North Sea natural gas, which provides 38% of the supply; continental natural gas, which provides 15% of the supply; and imported liquified natural gas, which is 12% of the total. The sources of our gas are therefore secure and safe and this bill will do nothing to change that. The energy security argument is a red herring to try to justify continued exploration and use of fossil fuels.

If there was a large oil or gas find, we would be looking at a minimum of 15 to 20 years for that find to be used. That source would last another 20-plus years. Effectively, by continuing to explore for oil and gas, we are saying we will lock our energy and electricity systems into continued domination by fossil fuels and continued high levels of emissions. Last year Providence Resources suggested it might find some 5 billion barrels of oil in our oceans; it did not but we can hypothesise that it did. When burned, those 5 billion barrels would have resulted in approximately 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂. The Druid and Drombeg field alone could, therefore, potentially have produced the equivalent of all Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions at 2016 levels for at least the next quarter of a century. That would have been a boon to the shareholders of a few companies but it would have simply added to the total levels of CO₂in the atmosphere and undermined the switch to renewables and the needed investment in alternative policies to achieve that. It would not have replaced Russian, Norwegian or North American gas but simply have added to them. Is anyone seriously suggesting that we should keep looking for new sources of carbon while expecting or hoping that those areas with already proved reserves will just leave them in the ground? That is not a serious proposition. We need to leave 80% of known reserves of fossil fuels in the ground as searching for more will not aid our energy security.

The opponents of the Bill argue we need and will want more gas. They say it is a transitional fuel, low in carbon emissions and can help us move to a carbon-neutral energy policy. It us true that gas may emit less CO₂than coal but it is not an environmentally or climate-friendly fuel. It is a fuel with high emissions of CO₂and a large-scale switch to gas is not a solution to climate change. It is simply a way of the postponing the kind of radical action we need and continuing the fossil fuel infrastructure that is propelling us to catastrophic climate change. I urge committee members to give serious consideration to the submission from Dr. John Broderick of Manchester University. He and his colleague, Professor Kevin Anderson, who is one of world’s leading climate scientists in the world, have argued that current levels of emissions will use up the EU's 2° Celsius carbon budget in under nine years; that fossil fuels, including natural gas, have no substantial role in an EU 2° Celsius energy system beyond 2035; and that within two decades fossil fuel use, including gas, must have all but ceased, with complete decarbonisation following soon after. There is no room here for a substantial gas sector post 2035 but some submissions to the committee pretend otherwise. If we are still extracting gas post-2035, exploring for it in the next decade and planning for it post 2050, we are saying goodbye to the Paris agreement and any hopes of achieving temperature rises under 2° Celsius. We would be admitting that we cannot stop catastrophic climate change.

Let us not pretend that gas is a solution to climate change when we know it is part of the problem. Global trickery and pretence have largely been the hallmark of the response to climate change. Carbon credits, offsets and capture and storage have all been used to avoid actually reducing fossil fuel use. In the words of Bob Dylan, let us not talk falsely now for the hour is getting late. We can falsify accounts for CO₂emissions all we like but the ultimate and accurate measure is the global level in the atmosphere. We cannot fool nature. Last year, the levels of CO₂reached 411 parts per million, the highest in our history on the planet and the highest in perhaps over 2 million years. Last year, we emitted the largest amounts of CO₂from human sources in history after some 30 years of knowing the science and facts on climate change and carbon use. It is time to stop the pretence and the falsehoods. I put it to the committee that all these arguments on energy security, gas as a bridging fuel, the possibility of new technology capturing and storing carbon are simply attempts to put off taking the necessary action to tackle climate change.

I will conclude by saying that we in People Before Profit are open to working with all Deputies and Senators. We are open to amendments that will strengthen the provisions of the Bill and ensure it does what it seeks to, which is to ban the exploration for fossil fuels in Ireland. Finally, there is a small drafting error here that will need to be addressed. The Bill refers to Part 3 of the Principal Act and it should refer to Part 2. We are open to and welcome discussion that will see Ireland move from being a laggard, as described by the Taoiseach, to a leader in the fight against climate change.