Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I might just pick up on Deputy Bruton's point in addition to the point about embodied carbon. He gave the example of SUVs, which produce 35 tonnes in their manufacture, versus lighter vehicles, which produce about 10 tonnes. The Minister stated we might need cars on the road to return to the way they used to be, that is, smaller and lighter. I came across a staggering figure recently. Approximately 99% of all cars sold now are of a larger cross-sectional area than the Volkswagen Passat, which was the standard, family-sized saloon car we would have known in the 1980s and 1990s. It is staggering that the size of vehicles has grown so much in the past decade in particular. It is not just about embodied carbon, therefore, but also about operational energy. We are ramping up renewable energy generation throughout the country, and rightly so, to up to 80% by 2030, and we are going to beyond that in the decades ahead, but that is still precious energy being used to transport 2 tonne machines around the place. From a purely efficiency and climate point of view, lighter and smaller vehicles make absolute sense, but there is nothing in the climate action plan to push the fleet in that direction. A lot of this comes under the Department of Finance, through taxation instruments and so on, but what we have now is an incredibly inefficient fleet that is going in the wrong direction, simply because these 1.8 tonne and 2 tonne machines are being sold in huge numbers. If we can get down to smaller and lighter vehicles, and if the emphasis of policy is to encourage and promote them, that will help us in our efforts to get to the 2030 targets and beyond.