Dr. James Glynn:

The clause around implementing a ratchet mechanism is correctly identified in Article 4 from the Paris Agreement. It means that within the legislation that Ireland maximises its ambition, as is consistent with what we agreed to as part of the European Union. It will also enshrine in legislation that every five years we will legislate, at some level, that our emissions will go down cumulatively. The ratchet mechanism is just recognising what is in Article 4 in the Paris Agreement and puts it into the Bill.

On the dangers of offsetting from the Senator's conversations with accountants at the climate change conference, certain technologies produce a problem with double accounting. There is an overlap here with my expertise in carbon capture and storage and Professors Buckley's expertise on nature-based solutions. There is this conflict between, ultimately, what would be not just CO2 removal but negative emissions technologies. This conflict is between nature-based solutions to remove emissions and then bioenergy solutions. There is this problem, correctly identified, that we need better understanding of what are, ultimately, the emissions intensity and the amount of emissions that are captured from bioenergy production. This must be then accurately represented within integrated assessment models and the amount of CO2 captured from the growth of bioenergy correctly represented in policy. There is ambiguity in some of the global models as to the accuracy with which bioenergy, in combination with carbon capture and storage, is represented. Bioenergy, carbon capture and storage could be a big vulnerability in the IPCC models. Double accounting should be taken into account.

In the short term, I do not believe that is an issue for Ireland. I am not sure how it would be legislated for. Scientifically, it is certainly something we need to be aware of in our analysis that would go into the Climate Change Advisory Council's deliberations.