Professor John Sweeney:

I thank the Chairman for inviting me to attend this meeting. I am emeritus professor at Maynooth University and I am a climatologist. I did a lot of the early work on scenario modelling for Ireland and the modelling of climate impacts in areas such as agriculture, biodiversity and hydrology. I have also done some work with the IPCC on the fourth assessment report or AR4. It is AR5 and AR6 that have really given rise to the change in approach, which is evidenced by the climate Bill in Ireland, for example, in terms of carbon budgets.

Members can see from the diagram I have provided that we now have a very strong linear relationship between cumulative emissions of greenhouse gasses and the resulting temperature change. We can now say what the finite budget remaining is, how that should be allocated among countries and what the consequences will be if we stop or reduce our emissions at certain points. We are dealing with very real-world consequences because we are dealing with tipping points of 1.5°C and 2°C where we may change the global climate system in a way that may not be recoverable. We know, for example, that there is a high risk that once we breach those points we may alter the circulation of the Atlantic, which Ireland is so dependent on, we may lose the Arctic summer sea ice and we may start the irrevocable melting of Greenland. All of those mean that it is imperative that we take very seriously the task that we have been entrusted with and reduce our emissions accordingly.

Professor McMullin has dealt with Article 2 of the Paris Agreement so I will not dwell on it. The Climate Change Advisory Committee handled its test of the Paris Agreement in a rather complicated way. I can see some of the arguments behind that but there is a much more simple way and that is to look at what the United Nations has said is the test of the Paris Agreement. It is a reduction of at least 7.6% on a global scale ongoing until 2030. For countries like Ireland, which has an historic responsibility, I think that figure is low and should probably be nearer 11%.

The question of compliance with our EU obligations also arises. I have heard a lot of comments that this is the second most ambitious reduction figure in the world. That is not necessarily a fair description because if one drags one's feet for 20 years and has huge per capitaemissions, it is quite easy to set a high target. Many countries have achieved similar figures and ongoing reductions that Ireland has not achieved so I do not think we should pat ourselves on the back prematurely. In fact, if one does the calculations for emissions between 1990 and 2030, one sees that for Ireland's projections the reduction is likely to be about 44% based on the current carbon budgets being allocated. It is not the Fit for 55 package that people might otherwise suggest.

In terms of the actual budgets themselves, and to add to what Professor McMullin has said, my main concerns would be the questions of slippage and timing. We have seen slippage and timing being the deathbed of many climate policies over the years. I am long enough in the tooth to remember our first national climate change strategy in 2000, which is 22 years ago. At that time, we had sectoral targets and tonnages for each of the sectors but that is now lost in the depths of history.

I would like to address the question of backloading. The budgets are backloaded as it is 4.8% in the first five-year period and 8.3% in the second five-year period. That is very risky because of slippage. If we do not get that up and running in the first five-year period, it will place an intolerable burden on the period 2026 to 2030. In particular, the fact that we will not incorporate the national and sectoral budgets finally in the plan until the fourth quarter of this year creates at least a two-year loss in the first carbon budget.

Another aspect is the reporting schedule for the Climate Change Advisory Council, which is obliged to report by 30 October each year. The Ministers who have been flagged with not taking sufficient corrective action have a whole three months to respond to those comments but that takes the whole procedure into early 2023 and beyond the time for which the 2022 climate action plan will have been formulated. There is a real administrative difficulty here. It may not be possible to take corrective action to keep us within budget in a timely fashion.

I am very concerned that, as Professor McMullin has said, these are not targets but legally required limit values. If we do not meet them by the end of 2022 or early 2023, we will be required to make savage reductions in sectors to achieve them by 2025. Let us make no mistake about that because this is a legally enforceable requirement.

I am concerned about the time lag in terms of when the data becomes available because we know it takes some time for the emissions data to become public. We have provisional data for emissions in 2020 that were published in September of last year so there is a lag of almost of a year in the data becoming available. It is going to be very important that if we are to inform the CCAC in a timely fashion, the council will have to have access to provisional data much earlier than the nine-month lag that currently exists. I think the CCAC has sent a memorandum of understanding to the Government that addresses this point to some extent. It is an essential requirement for the CCAC to be able to work efficiently.

The sum total of all of that is that there is a great deal of uncertainty in terms of the first carbon budget period. On that basis the precautionary principle, which Professor McMullin mentioned, would seem to indicate that preliminary action should be taken in advance. We should not use the excuse that we do not have the technical infrastructure and administrative capabilities, or that all sorts of obstacles are stopping us from making the necessary requirements in the first carbon budget, and therefore it should be a relatively relaxed budget. I think that the opposite applies. We have moved beyond the economics and the infrastructure. We must act in a manner that is commensurate with a problem that was described in just one way yesterday and that is the climate emergency. We have seen how the organs of the State have effectively responded to an emergency over the past two years.

This is an emergency to which an equal response capability also should be given The issue of timeliness is important.

I have concerns in respect of some of the assumptions on which the CCAC modelling was based. In particular, I have concerns regarding the credibility of the land use, land-use change, and forestry, LULUCF, arguments that were put forward. There is so much uncertainty in respect of those arguments that there is a case for using the precautionary principle there. I will be happy to explore that further if members have questions on it.

I have given indications in my written statement in respect of the exposed population in many of the sectors with which we are concerned. They are indicative and overlapping. I do not stand over them as being mutually exclusive. However, members can see where the big problem areas are in the two sectors that are not showing adequate signs of reduction and parts of which are showing signs of increase. They can see that the 93,244 farms are responsible for 37% of emissions and the 1.39 million households with cars are responsible for almost 18% of our emissions. These are the two sectors that we have to address very effectively in the sectoral allocation in any budget to make carbon budgets viable and credible at a national level. I refer to the remaining three areas identified in the statement, namely, residential, energy and manufacturing. Energy is the success story, as the committee heard yesterday, and may continue to be the baseline from which we draw most progress in the next few years.

My conclusions are, perhaps, more fundamental because if carbon budgets at a national level are to be credible, that requires commitment and credibility at a sectoral level. I wish to look briefly at some of the choices we need to make in that regard and whether they are being made in terms of national policy at the moment. I fear they are not being made. First, the allocation of sectoral budgets will require, as has often been stated, major changes in how society is organised and, in particular, major changes in how agriculture and transport are organised. I have provided in the statement figures relating to the choices available. They are not my figures; they were produced and published by a former director of Teagasc . Of course, he is also a former member of the CCAC. Members can see that if we go for 51% across the board, there is equity. Let us be honest - this is very unlikely in agriculture. However, if we go for a 33% reduction in agriculture, for example, it means that the rest of society - those millions of households referred to in the previous table - will be expected to bear a heavier burden of approximately 60% reduction. That is quite a considerable reduction to anticipate in the course of ten years. If we get a 15% reduction in agriculture, the rest of society will have to burden itself with an 80% reduction. These figures are not theoretical; they are legally enforceable carbon limit values to which we must face up. If we went down to 10%, which is quite close to what we are seeing in some of the Food Vision 2030-type documents at the moment, the burden becomes very heavy and really impractical for the rest of society.

I wish to consider some of the more recent developments that have emerged from the COP26 meeting, which I had the pleasure of attending. They are relevant to the credibility of our carbon budget. The first such development, and one that I welcome, is that Ireland very proudly signed up to a proposed reduction of 30% in methane emissions by 2030. Some 70% of the world's economy is now committed to this reduction. We have not heard Ireland state this is what it is going to do. I wonder why that may be the case. Do we really expect the rest of the world to carry our burden once again? If we were to reduce agricultural emissions by 33% and if, as part of that, we were to reduce methane emissions only by 10%, a figure that corresponds to what is being offered in Food Vision 2030, the reality is that the rest of agriculture - and that is a very significant amount of agriculture - would have to face a 77% reduction. There are intrasectoral divisions and issues of just transition that will be significant if we are not willing to bite the bullet on a larger scale. The conclusion one may draw is that only an immediate policy change, rather than waiting for the next carbon budget, to ensure significant near-term and ongoing reductions in methane can protect livestock agriculture in the first instance and, second, the rest of agriculture, from far more onerous and less planned mandatory and very rapid emissions reductions that will be required to meet those budgets.

The second point I wish to make in respect of COP26 relates to the infamous paragraph that members probably read ad nauseam at the end of November when the final meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change resulted in last-minute changes to the agreed communiqué and the rejection of that communiqué by large countries and large emitters. The paragraph, which is before the committee, states that it:

Calls upon Partiesto accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies [we can do that], and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems [we are doing that], including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power [we are doing all of that, but then it states] and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition.

I refer to the section calling for the phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. If we ask the Central Statistics Office, CSO, what is being done about that, we will find that in 2019 the CSO estimated that we were raising €3 billion on energy taxes, spending €0.4 billion on environmental subsidies related to energy and emissions, and subsidising fossil fuels to the amount of €2.4 billion. Those subsidies are partly direct subsidies, but they are also taxes foregone as a form of subsidy. We are now in the rather strange situation of trying to form a carbon budget that discourages and fosters incentives to reduce fossil fuel consumption but we are still throwing €2.4 billion of taxpayers' money at subsidising fossil fuels.

On the issue of slippage, I am disappointed that the Climate Action Plan 2021 only targets the production of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuel subsidies by the first quarter of 2024. That smacks a little of the issue in respect of the National Climate Change Strategy 2000 all over again. We really should recommend that this is an overly lengthy delay and that fossil fuel subsidies and actions should take place in 2022 with a view to being incorporated in the financial budget at the end of this year and commencing in 2023.