Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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We have received apologies from Deputy Clendennen. That is all we have at the moment. The first item is engagement with experts on the carbon budget 2031-2035. Pursuant to our meetings before the summer recess with the Climate Change Advisory Council and the Minister, members requested an additional meeting to continue the discussion on carbon budgets. That is today's meeting. The budget represents the total amount of emissions that may be emitted in the State in that five-year period, measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Acts 2015-2021. Dáil Éireann referred the latest carbon budget programme, covering 2031 to 2035, with a provisional budget for 2036 to 2040, to the committee on 20 May 2025 and we are required to report back to the Dáil by 6 October.

I welcome our witnesses: Professor Hannah Daly, Professor Barry McMullin, Mr. Paul Price and Professor John Sweeney. I remind them to put their mobile phones on silent or, preferably, turn them off. Before inviting them to deliver their opening statements, I advise the witnesses of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity.

Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

As regards the way the meeting will run in terms of format, I will shortly invite each of the four witnesses to make an opening statement to a maximum of five minutes. Once the statements have been delivered, I will call on the members of the committee in the order in which they indicate to me to put their questions. We operate a rota system which provides each member with an initial six minutes to engage with our witnesses. It is important to note that the six minutes are for both questions and answers. Therefore, it is essential for members to put their questions succinctly and witnesses to be succinct in their responses. When all members who have indicated have had their initial engagement, and time permitting, a second round will commence whereby each member will have up to three minutes for questions and answers, if required. Please note that the duration of this meeting is limited. We have an additional challenge in that the Dáil sits today and there will be a vote on the Order of Business shortly after 2.30 p.m., so Members of the Dáil will need or will prefer to be finished by then. I ask members and witnesses to bear that in mind in terms of questions and statements and to focus on their contributions.

I call on the first witness, Professor Hannah Daly, to deliver her opening statement.

Professor Hannah Daly:

I thank the Chair, Deputies and Senators for the invitation to give evidence on the proposed second cycle of carbon budgets. I am speaking in my capacity as professor of sustainable energy at University College Cork, where I lead research on energy transitions and climate policy. I was also a member of the Climate Change Advisory Council's carbon budgets working group and led the energy system modelling scenarios that underpin the council's proposals.

The matters before the committee on the proposed carbon budgets are of great importance. Carbon budgets are the mechanism through which Ireland translates its international climate obligations into binding limits at home. They are our contribution to the Paris Agreement goal of holding global temperature rise to 1.5°C. We are now dangerously close to breaching that threshold, profoundly threatening our security and well-being. Climate safety depends on collective action. To protect ourselves, we need others to cut emissions deeply, and to do so we must show that we are willing to do the same.

Carbon budgets also matter for the sectors that need to transform. They should give clarity and direction to farmers, energy companies, industry and households about the scale, direction and pace of change required. If they are to succeed, they must be transparent, robust and subject to close public scrutiny. People need to see not only what the targets are but why they are set at this level and how they will be delivered in practice. This is the only way they can be understood, trusted and implemented.

First, I will give findings from the energy system scenarios. To support the council's task in preparing a second carbon budget programme, my team in UCC modelled multiple pathways for Ireland's energy system to 2050 under different carbon budgets. These scenarios present pathways for urgently ending our dependence on fossil fuels, which now supply more than 80% of our energy and leave us profoundly vulnerable. This dependence costs households, businesses and the State billions every year. During the recent energy crisis, fossil fuel imports drove inflation and energy poverty and required €1 billion in emergency energy credits just in 2024.

By contrast, the alternatives are available and are more affordable and viable than ever. The sustainable energy transition entails the following five actions. First are wind and solar - renewable electricity is the backbone of the transition - supported by electricity storage and a strengthened grid. Second is electrifying transport, ending sales of fossil cars, vans and trucks and accelerating EV adoption. We have no carbon budget left for new fossil-fuel cars. Third is reducing unnecessary car use through compact development, public transport and active travel. Fourth are retrofitting and clean heat by rolling out heat pumps and district heating. Fifth is decarbonising industry, shifting away from oil and gas to efficiency, electrification and, in some cases, biogas.

These solutions, driven by renewables, electrification and efficiency, are not speculative technologies for the future; they are proven, scalable and already being deployed around the world. The main barriers are political will, institutional capacity and time, not technology and not costs.

Our modelling confirms that moving faster on all of these fronts is less costly than sticking with current policies. Delayed action costs more. It means locking in fossil infrastructure, higher compliance costs, and greater reliance on risky carbon removals. Cutting fossil fuels now can reduce costs, strengthen energy security and bring major benefits for health, equity and prosperity.

I will move to the question of climate neutrality and methane. I wish to address the council’s choice to interpret Ireland’s statutory obligations to align carbon budgets with climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest and with our obligations under the Paris Agreement as “temperature neutrality”, meaning no additional warming by 2050. I supplement this statement with a detailed briefing report on the matter, led by my colleague Dr. Róisín Moriarty. “Temperature neutrality” diverges from international norms, including, crucially, the EU’s definition of climate neutrality as net-zero greenhouse gases by 2050. There are several problems with the approach. First, is scientific inadequacy. Under temperature neutrality, methane emissions could continue to remain at very high levels, continuing to cause substantial warming, and yet be treated as climate neutral. This ignores robust scientific evidence that shows that cutting methane emissions strongly is one of the strongest and most immediate levers we have for slowing temperature rise in the next decade or two. The Paris Agreement requires us to pursue the highest possible ambition, grounded in equity and fairness. That means methane emissions must decline sharply – at least 30% by 2030 in line with the global methane pledge - and more deeply thereafter.

Second, temperature neutrality can cause perverse outcomes, such as an apparent cooling from reducing methane, which is treated as equivalent to carbon dioxide removal, even though emissions remain high. Scholars have shown that this approach embeds grandfathering of emissions entitlements. This rewards high emitters, is deeply unfair, and runs against the principle of climate justice within the Paris Agreement. Recent analysis also warns that the method underpinning temperature neutrality is unstable and ill-suited for national carbon budgeting.

Third is setting a precedent. Ireland’s per capitamethane emissions are already among the highest in the world due to our large ruminant livestock sector. If we adopt a weaker definition of climate neutrality, we not only lock in an inequitable share of warming for ourselves but also set a precedent for others to follow, a dangerous signal at this critical juncture. Earlier this year I joined more than 20 climate scientists, including some of the world’s most eminent, in an open letter to New Zealand’s Prime Minister warning against a similar plan to adopt temperature neutrality for methane.

Moreover, even for CO2, temperature neutrality is insufficient. The world is now overshooting 1.5°C, but the Paris Agreement obliges us not to give up. In effect, adopting temperature neutrality means either giving up on the Paris Agreement’s central goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, or else requiring other countries to do more to compensate. For these reasons, I recommend the committee rejects temperature neutrality as a basis for carbon budgets and adopts budgets that are aligned not only with our obligations under the EU but also with those under the Paris Agreement and so on. I also urge the committee to recommend an immediate acceleration in action across energy, efficiency, land and agriculture. We cannot wait until the 2030s.

Professor Barry McMullin:

I am emeritus professor of engineering at DCU and am speaking on behalf of myself and my two colleagues: Professor Sweeney, emeritus professor of geography at Maynooth University, and Paul Price, who is an adjunct faculty member with the faculty of engineering at DCU.

We thank the joint committee for the opportunity to provide evidence on the second cycle of carbon budgets for Ireland, covering the periods 2031 to 2040, as proposed by the Climate Change Advisory Council. We will briefly summarise our assessment of the proposals and our recommendations for action. We have submitted a separate briefing document with more detailed explanation and motivation.

In our initial submission to the public consultation on the proposals, we identified several issues of concern, particularly in relation to the statutory requirement for consistency with Article 2 of the Paris Agreement. At that point, we recommended that the budgets should not be adopted pending satisfactory clarification on this central issue. The council has since provided a summary response on this question in the form of a so-called “Paris Test” of the second cycle budget proposals. We have been engaged directly with the council to fully understand the detailed rationale and basis of this additional analysis.

We acknowledge our appreciation of the responsiveness of the council in these interactions. However, having now reviewed this cycle 2 Paris test analysis in detail, our view is that it is unsatisfactory on multiple distinct grounds. In brief, the test involves a comparison between the modelled future contribution of Ireland to warming and the remaining available warming at global level. Under global scenarios consistent with the Paris limit, the global temperature peak would occur around 2050 and subsequently decline to safer levels. Similarly, under the domestic Irish emission scenarios modelled by the council, the Irish contribution to warming would peak around 2050 and subsequently decline significantly. However, for the purposes of the test, the council has chosen not to compare the peak of Irish warming contribution to the peak of global warming around 2050, but rather compare the significantly lower Irish warming contribution as of 2100 to the global peak. This amounts to an apples and oranges comparison, which fundamentally undermines the coherence and validity of the test. If all countries adopted this approach that would allow collective global scenarios where the temperature peak could substantially exceed the 1.5°C limit.

The test relies on choosing a so-called reference year as a basis for equitable differentiation of effort among the Paris Agreement parties. The council adopted 2020 for the Paris test applying to the first cycle of carbon budgets and proposes to retain that choice for the assessment of the second cycle. However, this now conflicts directly with professional ethical advice commissioned by the council itself, which found retrospectively that that choice lay well outside the climate ethics consensus. In essence, choosing a late reference here grandfathers or ignores Ireland's significant historical contribution to global emissions in the period up to 2020, which is, of course, very unfair when it comes to the question of what Ireland’s share should be of the remaining global carbon budget consistent with limiting heating to +1.5°C. It is essential that this choice be critically re-evaluated.

The test methodology makes no provision for representing the warming contribution of emissions from international aviation and shipping. This is despite the published international expert legal view that the Paris Agreement does require countries to take responsibility for such emissions. It appears to us that a plain reading of the provision of the Act for the carbon budget process to be consistent with the requirements of Article 2 of the Paris Agreement positively requires such provision to be made.

We have significant concerns regarding more technical issues in the implementation of the test. These centre on the use of potentially inconsistent approaches to estimating available warming at global level versus the Irish contribution to warming. Taking all these issues into consideration, we reiterate our position that the proposed budgets should not be adopted as they stand. Instead, we recommend that the council be requested to commission an open and independent peer review of the appropriate methodologies for assessment of carbon budgets and their underlying emission scenarios, fully reflecting all the relevant provisions of the Act, and to reassess their budget proposals in the light of the outcomes from that review. We acknowledge that this would inevitably involve some additional lapse of time before the second cycle of budgets could be approved. Nonetheless, we believe this is merited. We emphasise that such a delay must not be taken as an impediment to full and urgent implementation of the already approved first cycle of carbon budgets.

The adoption of a complete set of sectoral emission ceilings for the periods 2026 to 2030 and 2031 to 2035 within the cumulative constraints of carbon budgets 1 to 3, has already been delayed for far too long. Even more importantly, it is essential that the next update of the climate action plan presents credible policies and measures to come into budget compliance by 2030 and to lay the foundations for the progressively deeper cuts in emissions required beyond 2030.

It is no longer a question of merely doing our best. We must do what is necessary. There is now a very strong case for the establishment of mechanisms to dynamically regulate the upstream inputs to Irish societal activities, such as fossil fuels, via some form of equitable rationing.

Finally, we must note the harsh reality that the direction of geopolitics has swung away from co-operation on climate action and toward conflict and the undermining of international institutions. We urge the committee to consider how to significantly upscale and prioritise Ireland's diplomatic effort on climate action so that our local efforts can make the maximum possible contribution to catalysing the required emergency global response. We again thank the committee for its invitation and look forward to the discussion.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank our witnesses for their contributions and will move to questions from members. The first speaker is Deputy Whitmore.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I thank Professor McMullin for his contribution.

I have a lot of questions but the first thing jumping out at me is the paragraph of the submission relating to aviation emissions and the fact that there is now legal advice that national emissions budgets should take aviation into account. This is the first time this committee has heard that. When discussing budgets, it has always been very much a matter of saying aviation is an international competency, that it will be accounted for in other ways and that we are not going account for it in our budgets. Could Professor McMullin go into that a little more for us because there is quite a discussion on lifting the cap at Dublin Airport and whether this would actually be in compliance with the climate Act and our obligations under the Paris Agreement?

Professor Barry McMullin:

I thank Deputy Whitmore. It is a tricky issue because, as she says, the addressing of international aviation and shipping emissions has been fudged for a long time in international negotiations. Regarding the link in the submission, the advice from a very eminent legal expert is that the Paris Agreement does not include any such exception. With regard to binding the parties, or parties binding themselves, to pursuing the temperature objective of the Paris Agreement, aviation emissions must be taken into account. There is no other competent authority in the Paris Agreement; the parties are the countries. Therefore, given that the physical emissions from international aviation and shipping absolutely affect the climate, the only people under the Paris Agreement who can address that are the parties to it, and therefore they must do so. It is up to the parties – this is the bottom-up nature of the Paris Agreement – to figure out how to do that. That includes doing so domestically in Ireland and at European level.

The domestic Irish legislation, namely, the climate Act 2021, somewhat fudges this in the sense that the budgets exclude international aviation emissions but the setting of the budget is a separate matter. That is what we are talking about today. In the setting of the budgets, you have to look at Ireland’s contribution in respect of warming relative to what is required at a global level. Ireland’s contribution to international aviation and shipping is certainly contributing to the heating, so in setting the budgets you need to make an allowance for that. It effectively means that the budgets for domestic emissions need to be smaller to leave provision for whatever we are doing in terms of international aviation and shipping. However, the council has not addressed that in its test of whether domestic budgets, exclusive of aviation, are sufficiently in line with our global obligations.

It would not be enough, of course, even if the budgets were set in an appropriate way. They would be smaller as a result. The question of how much smaller depends on how much emissions you are going to have in international aviation and shipping. As the budgets are already extremely challenging, you do not want to reduce them any more than you have to. The logic of that, however, is that you have to look at what is happening under international aviation and shipping. Everybody is agreed that if the passenger cap at Dublin Airport, mentioned by the Deputy, is lifted, emissions from international aviation will go up by a significant amount. The passenger cap is not necessarily a good or appropriate way of seeking to limit emissions from aviation. It was not put in place for that reason. Nonetheless, if it is removed, emissions will go up. To me, the logic of that is that is that if the passenger cap is to be lifted, some other kind of measures or policies will need to be adopted to constrain and ideally reduce over time the emissions from international aviation and shipping. That is extremely difficult, particularly for aviation, whatever about shipping, where some technological options are viable. In aviation, yes, we can make aircraft a little more efficient. There is the idea of sustainable aviation fuel, but it is available only in tiny quantities and is highly unlikely to be available, in quantities comparable to what we currently use, within the next 20 years. This is the critical time for constraining emissions. It opens up a much wider discussion than the budgets alone but, in our view, it absolutely needs to be discussed and addressed at the same time. You do not just remove a constraint and then let things happen as they happen. You plan ahead and ask what the impact will be on emissions and what other things we need to do to manage this.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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Of course, the Paris Agreement obliges us to act with a precautionary approach. If we are not 100% sure, we need to take it into account and have a sort of risk-averse approach.

We obviously need to have those discussions. Perhaps that is something the committee needs to look at. Our obligations under the Paris Agreement would mean that we would have to do so.

Professor Barry McMullin:

Again, I am opening a wider discussion - and members should correct me if I am going too far afield - but what we can see in the discussions regarding Dublin Airport, data centres and the agricultural sector is that there are tensions, if not outright conflicts, between economic goals and climate goals. For too long we have pretended that there are no conflicts and cannot be any conflicts, and that it must be possible to simultaneously pursue our economic and climate goals without any interference between the two. That may have been true 20 or 30 years ago. In my view, it is no longer true. We can no longer delay acknowledging that and having an honest discussion about how to prioritise appropriate economic goals while at the same time, absolutely and in a precautionary way, achieving our climate goals. If we do not achieve our climate goals, then I am sorry. It is a cliché, but there is no economy on a dead planet. There is also no economy on a planet where industrialised civilisation is no longer functional. That is the future we are now looking at with the rate at which the climate is destabilising.

Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)
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I listened to the Minister of State with responsibility for overseas development, Deputy Neale Richmond, at the National Ploughing Championships yesterday. He said that we are at an existential crisis point when it comes to international development solidarity between the global north and global south. This is a climate justice issue above all else because of the disproportionate price the global south will have to pay for our inaction. It is becoming clear, particularly on the basis of the reports I have read, that we cannot accept these budgets.

I have a couple of questions. One of them is for Professor Daly. It relates to data centres and the EirGrid report on them. It is becoming quite clear that we have to put some sort of cap on the expansion of data centres in Ireland. We are just running to stand still. I would welcome the Professor's thoughts on the point at which we will have to call a halt to the further expansion of data centres here.

Professor Hannah Daly:

I have released various public reports and analyses that examine the question of data centres and the Senator's framing that we are running just to stand still is absolutely correct. Over the past decade, the expansion in energy demand from data centres has basically matched our expansion of wind energy production, which means we are not cutting fossil fuels. The ultimate goal of the climate Act and carbon budgets is to limit fossil fuel and other sources of emissions rather than to expand renewables. Right now, the number of data centres is primarily growing by means of the use of fossil fuels. This goes back to Professor McMullin's overarching view that it is not sufficient simply to expand clean technologies and take clean energy measures. The major threat to carbon budgets and, as a consequence, the Paris Agreement in its entirety is the expansion of carbon-intensive and energy-intensive industries that do not have technical solutions. That data centres are concentrated so heavily in Dublin and across Ireland is a major warning for countries across the rest of the world that wants to expand data centres. They are connecting to the gas network because the electricity network is so constrained. Growing with fossil fuels, in the case of Dublin Airport or data centres, or growing our agrifood industry on the basis of growing carbon emissions, is just not compatible with our climate law.

Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)
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Could Professor Daly explain the particular challenge with methane in the context of temperature neutrality versus the Paris test, which lies at the core of both submissions made to us today?

Professor Hannah Daly:

My colleagues and I have objected to temperature neutrality on overlapping but different parallel scientific disagreements, we will say, but I would agree with the basis of the submission made by them.

The framing of the report we have published is that we can stabilise methane emissions and claim climate neutrality because methane emissions are short lived. Therefore, if we stabilise emissions, the temperature increase caused by one burst is offset by the decline from an emission ten years ago. We can claim to be not adding to additional warming, but that ignores the substantial warming that has already been created by our ongoing methane emissions. If Ireland's position is that we claim temperature neutrality, we can stabilise our very high per capitamethane emissions from our export-orientated livestock sector and claim to be compatible with the Paris Agreement, or if we reduce methane emissions, for example, by 20%, 30% or more, under temperature neutrality that is counted as a sort of cooling or an offset. It is like saying that methane emissions decline is cooling, whereas we might still be emitting far more than is compatible with the Paris Agreement. This is why it is seen as inadequate.

Global methane emissions from human activities have caused the concentration of such emissions in the atmosphere to be two and half times what they were before industrial development. That is partially from the fossil fuel industry and partially from agriculture - mainly livestock. That has caused approximately 0.5°C of the 1.5°C of warming that we have already witnessed. Approximately one third of the warming we experience is attributable to climate change. The IPCC and the UN are clear that the 0.5°C of warming needs to decline. We have the tools. We have methane reduction as a lever. Otherwise, temperatures will exceed the Paris Agreement temperature goals excessively and it will be very difficult to come back down to a safe temperature.

Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)
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My final questions for this round are for Professor McMullin. Earlier, he called for an open and independent peer review of the appropriate methodologies for the assessment of carbon budgets. Does he have a view on how that should take place? Is it unusual to have to call for that, given that we have been presented with a proposed budget? How does Professor McMullin anticipate that we might carry out such a review?

Professor Barry McMullin:

It is not unusual per se. "Peer review" is a phrase that is widely used in the academic world. It is not one thing; there are many different forms of peer review. In a sense, a gold standard in this field is the IPCC process whereby when it is working on reports, they are published in draft form. There is a process where anybody essentially can volunteer themselves to provide review comments, but, in particular, people with specific expertise can volunteer themselves to provide comments. The IPCC assesses and responds to every comment it gets in a public and open way. That form of public, open peer review is arguably the most robust version. It is challenging administratively and so forth, but in this case, that model would probably be merited.

I completely understand that the council had timescale concerns and it only has so many resources available. This process we are talking about today of a budgeted option in accordance with the climate Act is not a one-off thing. It has to be repeated at intervals. It is the absolute centrepiece of the legislation and of climate mitigation and policy domestically for Ireland. There is considerable merit in it. The council has acknowledged that it has struggled to determine the most appropriate way of making this assessment. It made various changes between the first cycle of carbon budgets and this cycle. Some of them were definitely improvements, but, as we have documented, we have concerns about others. That is process we have in mind. It is not something completely bizarre or different from what is well understood in the scientific and academic community.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I want to check that I have the right picture of how matters stand in the context of the temperature neutrality piece.

Of course, the ultimate objective was to stay below a 1.5°C increase. We must stay below a 2°C increase. We are already, as we know, almost at the point of a 1.5°C increase. Some 0.5°C of that increase is the result of methane, which is shorter lived. If we were to pull back on methane, we could increase the space available and create a higher likelihood for the general collective increase to remain stable at a level of 1.5°C. There is a danger in temperature neutrality in terms of methane. We are effectively saying that we will use up that 0.5°C space again and again, with more and more short-term methane emissions, and hold to that increase of 1.5°C, which is, of course, a bad thing. We thereby take from the possibility of space opening up if we were to reduce methane emissions. That is something we can do and have the tools to do. We reduce the space for carbon emission reduction and make it much more difficult for every other industry and for every other measure we are taking to reduce carbon emissions to keep the increase below 1.5°C. So much of the space is being used up again and again by short-term repeated methane emissions. Is that the position?

Professor Hannah Daly:

That is correct. Temperature neutrality, even at the global scale, is a necessary condition for meeting the temperature goals, but it is not sufficient. Under temperature goals, we must limit global warming to a 1.5°C increase. If we simply stabilise temperatures, we could stabilise temperatures at an increase of 2.5°C or 3°C. The council has not tested the extent to which its temperature neutrality scenarios are compatible with an increase of 1.5°C and well below 2°C. This is the main problem.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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The alternative approach is to look at emissions. It seems those are measurable. It is one thing to say we have decided that we want to stop warming at 1.5°C or 2°C, but we know there are tipping points in climate science. At a certain point, what humans do will have created tipping points of which we do not necessarily have control. What we have control of and can plan for and move towards in a measured way is the emissions we are producing. We can move those towards net zero and that is the EU approach. Perhaps the witnesses would comment on the tipping point piece. I will then come back to the Paris test. Perhaps I will ask my questions. I am interested in that tipping point piece and why a measurable approach, such as the reduction of emissions, is preferable.

Professor John Sweeney:

The Senator's comment about the extent to which space is created or used up for other countries by our approach is relevant. It is also relevant to the comments made by Senator Noonan about the responsibilities we have to other countries. The Paris Agreement follows on from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It has the status of a treaty. The important point on which we are centring today is the requirement that Ireland is bound by the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Equity, in terms of our contribution, is not enough. We must create space for some of the other countries in the world that require an increase in their agricultural emissions, for example, to develop. This is where the committee's deliberations revolve around the issues of fairness and equity. In particular, I reinforce what Professor McMullin said about the council's choice of 2020 as the reference year. That is the year chosen as the beginning of Ireland's historical responsibility for climate change. To me, that is indefensible. If you were to go to an international meeting and say that you only assume responsibility from 2020, you would be laughed out of the place. Between 1990 and 2019, for example, Ireland emitted 2,000 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. In the industrialisation period before that, it was roughly comparable, albeit a bit less. We cannot say we are only going to claim the remaining carbon budget on the basis of our historical responsibilities from five years ago and have any credibility on the international scene.

That is where the CCAC should be focusing a bit more.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I am interested in the years involved. Professor Sweeney is right that there is a climate justice piece, particularly if the high-emitting countries which are using that methane space and which have the capability and tools that allow them to act are not acting on their relative responsibilities and capabilities and are using up the potential space that might be needed for increases in emissions for countries that are literally trying to stabilise their infrastructure. The Paris Agreement was struck in 2015. Surely, when we signed the agreement, that was the last possible date on which you could say that you did not recognise your responsibilities - common and differentiated responsibilities that were literally acknowledged then. However, there is also maybe an argument for using Rio in 1992 in this regard because it was then that the science became available. The science was clear from the nineties. Political agreement as to responsibility dates from 2015. Do the witnesses think one of those two years or somewhere in between would be a better reference year than 2020?

Am I right in saying that 2050 is viewed as the estimated date for the peak of global warming? Is it the case that Ireland, when deciding how much of the global warming in 2050 we are contributing to, we are going to look at how much we will be doing in 2100? It seems completely wild to say that in order to identify what we will be doing in 2050, we will use a figure from 2100 and give ourselves an extra 50 years to fudge matters. That is very illogical. Is there any logic that would justify this disjointed approach?

Professor Barry McMullin:

I will mention both of them. On the reference year for the start of differentiation, Mr. Price and I are on record in published literature. We had a paper reviewing the original Paris test that the climate council implemented in the first round in which we pulled out this specific question of the reference year. At that point, having reviewed the wider literature around these things, we said exactly what the Senator said about 2015. It is questionable whether it is defensible at all but it is certainly the latest date one might defend in an international context.

On the question of the confusion of years for the testing of Irish contributions versus the required global effort, that was not actually evident in the original letter the council sent back to the committee. We engaged with the council, and we acknowledge the openness of and the engagement by the council with us. It clarified exactly what the Senator said in correspondence we can make available if the committee wishes, taking the Irish contribution as of 2100 and comparing it with the available warming at the time of global peak warming.

I am not speaking on behalf of the council - the committee can refer to the council itself - but in communication with us it explained this. It acknowledged it was a change from what it had done in the first cycle of the carbon budgets. It argued this arose because of a change in its methodology from global warming potential star, GWP*, to this new simple climate model called finite amplitude impulse response, FaIR. These are technicalities but its argument was that its intention all along has been to compare Ireland's long-term contribution to warming versus the peak requirement. Unfortunately, the world is not going to wait for Ireland's long-term contribution. The tipping points the Senator mentioned are going to be triggered - some of them are potentially already being triggered - as the global temperature inches past 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The risk of those tipping points being triggered occurs at that point. The temperature contribution right now is absolutely critical.

The committee would have to, in a sense, refer to the council for a more nuanced motivation of its position on this.

Going back to the question from Senator Noonan, this is exactly the sort of issue that is best teased out through an open peer-review process. It would not be reasonable for yourselves, a committee of parliamentarians, to be trying to adjudicate on that sort of issue. We are only raising these issues to explain why we believe there are matters of concern that have not adequately been addressed as yet and that, therefore, if the budgets were to be adopted as they stand there is a reasonable doubt as to whether they would meet the legal requirements of the Act. We are not lawyers but it certainly seems that this would not be a good basis for going forward.

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I thank all the witnesses for coming into us today and giving us the benefit of their expertise. I apologise for being late. I will follow up on what Professor McMullin has said and the views he raises. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has been in before this committee previously on the topic of the Paris test versus temperature neutrality. The Minister said he has not formed a full view on it yet. Have any of the witnesses had an opportunity to make their case directly to the Minister? Have they been offered that opportunity or are they aware? That is my first question. Has the Minister spoken to any of the witnesses about this? No. Okay. We will raise that directly with the Minister.

Are the witnesses aware of any other EU country that is proposing to change its methodology in the same way as us?

Professor Barry McMullin:

I will take this but Professor Daly may want to add as well. "No" is the simple answer. It is important to emphasise that what we are talking about here is what Ireland is doing under its domestic legislation. Ireland's domestic legislation is not replicated in other European countries. They have legislation but there are different approaches. It is legitimate for a country, as the Paris Agreement framework provides for bottom-up decision making, for better or for worse. We could argue whether that is the most effective basis for global co-operation but that is the framework laid down by the Paris Agreement, namely that individual countries - parties to the Paris Agreement - undertake in good faith to act and to put their cards on the table as to what they judge to be their fair share contribution. Ireland has chosen to enshrine that in the legislation, particularly in the 2021 Act. On this question mark about assessing the Paris Agreement compliance with that, in the first round of carbon budgets an approach was taken using this so-called GWP* mechanism, which certainly at first sight seems to run contrary to established norms in the way the different countries report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC. You can do both things. You can report to the UNFCCC using the standard way but for domestic purposes - if it makes sense - you may use other things that are derived from or are a different representation of the emissions number. It is not automatically a bad thing to do and in any case the council in this second round has moved away from that GWP* mechanism. The metric, if you want to call it that, for aggregation of gases is not really at issue. What is at issue is how best to assess Ireland's contribution. The council has presented something that kind of tries to ride two horses that do not go together. One is this temperature neutrality idea that Professor Daly has commented on and has explained very eloquently, which is that temperature neutrality on its own is, at best, a measure of stabilisation of contribution to temperature. One could, however, stabilise at completely unlivable temperatures so it is clear that in and of itself, this is inadequate. One has to look at temperature contribution. A standard accounting mechanism, particularly for methane, is not actually a good proxy for temperature contribution. In the specific circumstances where one is looking at temperature contribution it is appropriate to use different methodologies, but that in no way undermines the standard accounting processes or standard reporting obligations.

Professor Hannah Daly:

I thank Deputy Ahern. I will address briefly the Deputy's first question on whether I have engaged with the Minister. It was not directly but I have engaged with officials in his Department on the matter.

Second, on the Deputy's question on other EU countries, I am not aware of any other EU country that has taken this approach. Ireland has a far higher share of methane emissions in its inventory than other EU countries as a result of our livestock sector. As a result, around half of our emissions under the effort sharing regulation fall in the agriculture sector. In the documents I submitted, I suggest we look to the likes of Denmark where around one third of its entire greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture as well. Instead of redefining the metric in 2050 for climate neutrality, which is on the table here, the Danish Government has progressed to increase ambition, to bring forward the date of net zero and to target negative emissions by 2050. The evidence I have presented shows we will actually need to do this as well and it is not accounted for in our current carbon budgets. We can look to countries like New Zealand, whose Government has proposed temperature neutrality as an approach, but there has been strong scientific backlash against that.

Professor John Sweeney:

If I can just add to what Senator Higgins was saying about tipping points, it combines with the issue of fairness. A number of years ago, I sat in a small grass-roofed hut in rural Malawi where the whole village came to express their concerns about their harvest. I spoke to the village elder who asked what was going wrong there. He said they used to be able to go out and plant their crops in the spring and the rains would come and there would be something to feed the village with in the autumn. Now he said the rains do not come. What happens in the autumn? They go out to harvest their crops, the rains have retreated early and the village is starving. I was asked who was causing this and I really felt ashamed. In a sense, I had to tell him that our per capita emissions in Ireland were 10.7 tonnes per person while those in Malawi were 0.9 tonnes per person. This is where the element of fairness has to come into our deliberations today. We cannot ignore the fact that we are grabbing a disproportionate share of the future and dwindling carbon budget to satisfy our political imperatives and economic needs. The tipping points have already arrived in many parts of the developing world and we cannot ignore that.

Mr. Paul Price:

On the issue of temperature neutrality and methane, Senator Higgins characterised it very well. Emissions of methane, particularly agricultural methane in Ireland, are sustaining our absolute impact on warming. We are already passing 1.5°C, but as Professor Daly said, if everyone aimed for temperature neutrality, we would end up staying over 1.5°C. Stabilising at that, if that is what temperature neutrality is, would be a problem. There is a confusion that I am afraid the CCAC has not helped. It has equated this idea of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 with temperature stabilisation as though its scenarios are doing that. Temperatures are reaching above this point and not going down again. In the CCAC's actual 15 short-listed scenarios, however, that is not what happens. All of its 15 scenarios peak and then return. It shaves off the peak, which requires the serious fossil fuel reductions to which Professor Daly referred. We have to do all of that, but we also have to cut agricultural methane, which is a huge lever. All of the CCAC's 15 scenarios cut methane by a serious amount - 28% - by 2040. That is not as fast as Professor Daly said was required. Rather, it should be faster. The CCAC's initial scenarios in 2021 were doing that, so in a way it has gone back from that. There is a disconnect between the CCAC equating climate neutrality by 2050 to temperature stabilisation when, in fact, that is not what its scenarios are doing. All of its scenarios are peak and return. That means they go over 1.5°C of fair share and they head down again. All of the scenarios are peak and return and that is a confusion that is not helped by the way the CCAC phrased things in the proposal.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I invite Deputy Daly in for round two.

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their submissions. Many of them spoke on fairness and equity.

On a related point, the international wholesale price of gas is down 74% since 2022, while, at the same time, retail prices remain up by 75%. Do the witnesses have any views on the restructuring of network charges and the PSO levy, which seems to be skewed against householders and small businesses in favour of data centres?

In response to Senator Higgins's question about the reference year, Mr. Price and Professor McMullin both said it was 2015. Would Professors Sweeney and Daly also set 2015 as the base year?

Reference was made to aviation and shipping emissions. What approaches have other EU member states taken in that regard? Do the witnesses recommend any of those approaches?

Professor Daly referred in her submission to five key areas for decarbonisation. One of the Ministers of State at the Department of climate said recently that we had dropped the ball on offshore renewable energy. Professor Daly mentioned wind and solar, electrifying transport, reducing unnecessary car use, retrofitting - we see the lack of funding for retrofitting and heat pumps in particular - and the decarbonisation of industry. She also mentioned policy levers. What policy levers could be pulled to accelerate action in the five key areas she mentioned?

Professor Hannah Daly:

I will defer the question on the PSO levy and gas network charges as it is not within my area of expertise.

I do not dispute the findings on the appropriate base year. My colleagues are more expert on climate science and international obligations, and I agree with their logic.

The Deputy asked about policy levers that could be pulled on what the SEAI calls the big five, which are the five areas I defined. The key priority in spelling out these five measures is that, in many cases, there is confusion as to what is the most appropriate way forward in terms of decarbonising the energy system. There may be a perception that different measures are optional or that measures that are weak and inappropriate can be scaled up to a large extent. I mentioned, for example, that biogas will play a small part in meeting emissions reductions targets. Its impact is relatively small compared with the big five measures and it is very difficult to scale up because of the very large land requirement for biogas and the associated expense and competition with other land uses. The reason we set out the big five is to create a vision for the direction in which we should all be pulling to 2030 and beyond to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The international consensus in energy terms is that renewables and electrification are the main pathway, rather than bioenergy or hydrogen, which are far more difficult to scale.

Regarding policy levers, one of the challenges in communicating and implementing carbon budgets in the energy system is that there is no simple policy lever to pull. Going on simple heuristics, we have a carbon price on fossil fuel emissions that is appropriate but it is currently a very weak signal because we are still adding fossil fuel infrastructure to the energy system. By "fossil fuel infrastructure" I mean fossil fuel vehicles, boilers and data centres that run on gas. We are not focusing on scaling down. First, we are not immediately ending the expansion of any equipment that sells fossil fuels - unfortunately, we are speaking about building LNG import terminals - and then we are not actively downscaling the fossil fuel sector, which would include the gas networks.

At the same time, fossil fuels are in everything we do - they are in our electricity, transport, heat and industry - so there has to be a very careful process of replacing them with efficiency, electrification and renewables within every home, factory and business and in our power sector. That is not a trivial matter.

Professor Barry McMullin:

I will make a few remarks in response to all the questions. On energy pricing, I will make what will probably appear to be an unpopular remark, at best: gas, petrol and diesel prices are all too low and need to go up. A term used in the energy industry - "the spark gap" - refers to what is essentially the difference between the price of electricity and the margin for electricity, which is generally more expensive than gas or liquid fuels. The significance of the price gap is that it determines in a big way the economic incentive for people to electrify by switching from direct combustion of fossil fuels - in transport, from combustion engine vehicles; in homes, from boilers to heat pumps; or in industry, from boilers to heat pumps, heat networks or whatever the other option would be. At the moment the spark gap is too high. It is too much cheaper to burn fossil fuels for one's needs. There is not enough of an economic incentive to electrify. Like any gap, it can be addressed from both sides. One could say we need to subsidise the price of electricity and maybe include so-called operational grants as well as capital grants for things like heat pumps so that as well as getting a capital amount, there will also be a reduction in the price of electricity. There is certainly merit in that.

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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Or energy credits.

Professor Barry McMullin:

Or energy credits. There is some merit in that, certainly. You can also come at it from the other direction by increasing the price of fossil fuels. You can do both - you can have a revenue-neutral approach that increases the price of fossil fuels and uses that to subsidise the price of electricity. These are all approaches that should be in the mix for consideration. Of course energy affordability is central, particularly for fuel-poor households. Any measures along these lines have to be very carefully considered and planned in order to protect access for everybody to adequate energy for dignified living. Virtually everything one does in an industrialised society involves energy usage. This is a well-studied question. We have included some suggestions and references in our submission, particularly the idea of tradeable emissions quotas which has not been deployed in any country to date. It came very close to being deployed in the UK in just before 2010, but the UK Treasury eventually rejected it on the basis that it was an idea ahead of its time. It said it was eminently practicable and would probably have the desired effect but it was ahead of its time. I suggest that its time may have arrived.

I absolutely sympathise with everyone who is struggling with prices in general and energy prices in particular but, being very honest, we are in a crisis. The transformation we require – it is not a transition – in our energy system is not going to be fast and it will not be cheap. We are taking an energy system which was developed incrementally over 100 or 150 years and, because we have left it so late, we are trying to replace it over the course of a couple of decades. That is going to be expensive. If we are to succeed, energy will have to be more expensive, relative to other things we spend money on, in household budgets over the next several decades. If we can do this successfully, there is a much better situation on the far side but we are now in a bottleneck. I think it is important to be honest about that.

There is another point I would make on gas prices particularly, but also fossil fuels in general.

Ireland has been chronically dependent on imports of energy since the foundation of the State. The huge project at Ardnacrusha was fantastic for a fledgling State, but electricity was a tiny part of our energy and it was really discretionary energy at that stage. Transport and heating relied on coal, liquid fuels and peat. During the Second World War we were held to ransom by our nearest neighbour. We know that from the Cabinet papers released afterwards. There was a deliberate policy choice to restrict the flow of coal to Ireland and it caused substantial hardship here. It was out of our control. I am old enough to remember the oil crises of the 1970s, which were the same story. The events in Ukraine were the same story.

We have never seriously grappled with taking control of our own energy. I am not saying we have to be completely self-sufficient in energy. That would be possible but we do not have to go all the way. However, our current situation is a disproportionate reliance on energy imports of all sorts, particularly fossil fuels. It is because our energy system is still dominated by fossil fuels that we have this problem. We are continuing into an increasingly fragile geopolitical century, crossing our fingers and hoping people will not notice little old Ireland and we will be fine. That is not a strategy for the turbulent times ahead.

Enhancing our energy security means doubling down on indigenous energy sources, primarily wind and solar, plus getting into the driving seat of extremely large-scale energy storage because that is needed to complement so-called variable renewable sources. It is perfectly possible but it is not as mature as wind and solar. Traditionally, Ireland relies on other countries to do technical innovation but this is a case in which Ireland is at the sharp end. It is in our national interest to be at the leading edge. We have been at the leading edge of incorporating wind and solar into our grid. We are a world leader in doing that but we need to take the next step, which is the deployment of long-duration energy storage.

All of this will cost money. It goes back to the point I made earlier. There are conflicts with our other economic priorities. Pretending there are no conflicts will not help matters. Some of that will contribute to energy being a bigger visible chunk of expenditure for households, companies, hospitals, schools and everybody. If we are open and honest, we will discuss the reasons for doing that and for the risks we are taking. Geopolitics can leave us with our economy in tatters, in the gift of some foreign despot.

Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for their insights and expertise. It is good to see a fellow Maynooth person up there. It was great to see Professor Daly over the summer as well. There was a previous question on the recommendation made by Professor McMullin that the council be requested to commission an open, independent peer review of the appropriate methodologies for assessment of carbon budgets. The professor mentioned the IPCC process and stated it would be an open peer-review process. Are there comparative countries or economies we can look to for best practice?

Professor Barry McMullin:

No. Ireland's climate Act of 2021 was world leading. I say that with no irony whatsoever. We have chosen to try to show what best practice in terms of bottom-up commitment of a developed country to the Paris Agreement would look like. The Act put all the pieces in place but the working-out of the Act and the filling-in of the details are missing. We do not really have somebody else to appeal to on how best to do this.

Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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Surely there are countries which have done elements of it well that we could look to and put pieces together, rather than trying to come up with the entire sum ourselves.

Professor Barry McMullin:

It is not a blank sheet. The council has done tremendous work. We are not starting from nothing. What the council has done, the reports it has commissioned and the work of the carbon budget working group is a great foundation.

However, as the Deputy saw, this particular piece of the jigsaw, which is in the Act - consistency with Article 2 of the Paris Agreement, which is where the temperature goal comes in - was not, for reasons I cannot speak to, undertaken during 2024 when the council was developing these budgets. When the council was prompted by this committee, it did so, but it was clearly done under severe time pressure. The council came back to the committee within two weeks. I certainly do not want to personalise anything, but there are papers in the peer-reviewed literature to which the council did not refer but to which it could have. Had it had more time, it could have done so.

We are learning how to do this. We have a very good foundation but there is more work that needs to be done. It would be imprudent to just push ahead, particular as, in terms of immediate climate policy, we have the confirmed budget for the next five years. We have a perfectly good provisional budget for the following five years. It may change a little on the basis of these deliberations but it is not going to change hugely. The proposal is to increase it by a small amount. It is certainly not going to increase by a major amount. In that sense, there is not a time pressure which means that these budgets have to be adopted right now.

Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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Does Professor McMullin think we may be trying to be too perfectionist about it? I mean that in the sense of having to ensure that every peer review has been covered rather than trying to pass the carbon budgets and that the council is doing the best it can, especially within the time constraints. I appreciate Professor McMullin's argument that there is not as much of a time constraint involved, but there are time constraints nonetheless.

Professor Barry McMullin:

Certainly, delay is bad. Due to the fact that this process is ongoing, however, the budgets have to be reviewed every five years at a minimum, but there will be a significant review of the budgets when the books on 2025 are closed early in 2027. These questions about how best to address assessing our contribution relative to those of other countries are not going away. As for trying to get the most possible, the most coherent and the most consistent answers - the best consensus across the widest range of experts - this is a good time to try to do that rather than pushing forward immediately.

Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Professor McMullin. He spoke pretty passionately about the need to be self-sufficient from an energy standpoint. I agree with him about solar and other energy. Professor Daly went through the findings from the energy systems scenarios. Something that is missing - and I am not sure if the witnesses have considered this or modelled it in any way, shape or form - is nuclear power. I am thinking of the possibilities nuclear energy could provide in terms of self-sufficiency from an energy standpoint as a cleaner form of energy, although I am not saying it is fully clean. Is that being considered or should it be as we look towards more self-sufficiency from an energy standpoint?

Professor Hannah Daly:

I will take the question on nuclear. We need to go to war with the army we have. The resources we have in Ireland are renewable resources. They are wind and solar. There is no, let us say, ideological objection to nuclear as a source of clean energy, but we need an energy source that can be scaled quickly, that is cost-effective and that is compatible with our existing power grid. The existing generation of nuclear does not comply with most of those conditions. Nuclear is very costly and would take many decades to construct here even if there was the political will to open up the question of it. We have more than enough offshore wind and, at certain times of the year, solar energy to meet our needs when these are complemented by stronger grid interconnection and long-duration energy storage. If energy storage was not scaling at the rate it is and reducing in cost, there might be a case to look at alternatives for backup. However, because the outlook for storage now is as positive as wind and solar has been for the past ten years, the outlook for being able to run the vast majority of our energy needs from wind and solar is very positive.

Professor John Sweeney:

I return to the Deputy's question about other countries' best practice.

Individual countries all have some strengths and weaknesses. I will mention one thing that may be of interest, which is that the French Government has, since 1 March this year, imposed a tax on private flights. That ranges from €210 to €2,100 per passenger for private jets entering the country. We have just under 7,000 private jet flights to Ireland every year. Those are individuals of very high worth, normally, and a tax would be quite appropriate in many cases to discourage unnecessary travel. Most of those flights are between Dublin and London, where there is a very good public and private service available. There are little nuggets that we might look at and that might be possible to investigate in the future. That is just one but there are others.

Every country in Europe has its own strengths. That is why European emissions have fallen by 37% since 1990. That percentage would be higher but for Ireland dragging the total back as a result of our only 4% or 5% reduction since 1990. That creates another imperative for us to go beyond simple equity in this particular carbon budget discussion.

Professor Barry McMullin:

On the nuclear question, I completely agree with Professor Daly that it is not appropriate at this stage, or I do not see fundamental ideological reasons for deciding on that. I would emphasise, however, that there are multiple interacting constraints right now in our energy policy. The planning process, identifying sites, communicating with communities, making these developments and building out great infrastructure - all these things are constraining the speed at which things can happen. If we open up another Pandora's box, which is what in the current setting a discussion about nuclear potentially is, the risk is that we just spend a lot of time having really difficult discussions and arguments about nuclear that just eat away at time and get in the way of the things that we know how to do, that we are already well advanced to do and that we have in the planning system. As I said, though, I do not have an ideological objection. If the newer nuclear technologies were, as they say, shovel ready, if they were proven, if they were available at a cost that made sense, then I could certainly see a role for that. However, in terms of the practical, on-the-ground situation right now, our priorities lie elsewhere.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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I am aware of the time, so I will be quick. First, it is great to see two DCU professors from my previous department of sustainable energy systems. I was talking to Professor McMullin briefly before about the thesis I did on data centre waste utilisation. Professor Daly spoke about Denmark and how it is dealing with its energy system. We know the comparison: there were 82 functional data centres as of 2024 in Ireland and 67 in Denmark. Significantly, Denmark already has a district heating system in place. We know the Tallaght district heating system is a success in a way, but what is the witnesses' opinion on that? What I would like to see instead of "Stop the growth of future data centres" is a change to "Enable growth if it adds renewables and useful heat". That is what the ideal situation would be, but we do not have a district heating system already installed, so it will not be as ideal as that. I want to know what the witnesses' opinion on that is.

What would the witnesses' ideal end-of-life plan for wind blades and solar panels be across Ireland?

Professor Barry McMullin:

I am on so I will take first cut and pass it over to Professor Daly. I thank the Deputy, from one DCU alumnus to another.

As regards the data centre issue specifically, the Deputy suggested that maybe we could have positive effects from data centre growth and that they would involve the deployment of more renewables. At best they would involve the deployment of more renewables to just about match the expansion in energy consumption. That is not improving things; it is at best just not making things worse. However, that would be true only if there were not these constraints. We have limited sites for new renewables development, we have limited capacity in the planning system, we have limited capacity in local communities to engage - we have all these constraints, so we need to develop renewables at the absolute maximum rate we possibly can in order to drive down our usage of fossil fuels for everything we are currently doing.

If some of the renewable sites, some of the capacity in the planning system, some of the expert engineers and some other critical resources are carved out to serve as data centres, that will inevitably slow down the deployment of renewable energy for our other needs. We hope this is a medium-term issue. It involves 20 or 30 years, rather than five years. We are trying to transform the entire energy system. When we get to the happy situation where we have 100% zero-carbon energy fully deployed, let us expand any and all energy use that we like. However, we are not in that happy situation and we will not be for at least 30 years.

The issue of waste heat is a bit of a red herring in the Irish context because we do not have the established heat networks. Heat networks are great. They do not serve every heat need but they are great and we know that from SEAI reporting on it some years ago. Accelerating the development of heat networks in Ireland would be very useful, but I would not do it on the basis that it would give a role to data centres that they would not otherwise have; we should do it because it is a way of decarbonising heat. We should remember that data centres may come and go for various reasons. If we have built them into the provision of heating as a critical source of heat and they go, we will have a different problem. Many things are bound up in there.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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There would be other industrial uses that we could hang a seat from regarding data centres. We are trying to solve a problem that is already there. In Denmark, planned approvals are linked in with future projects to which they can contribute. When I discussed these matters with Dr. James Carton, he told me he would have been very much in favour of removing the embargo for data centres if they locate across the country where excess renewable energy is or will be. Regarding the use of alternative back-up power, batteries or green hydrogen, he is very much pro-green hydrogen. Professor McMullin said we are very good at implementing our renewable energy but significant curtailments are still happening. I was at a solar farm a few weeks ago that is turning off its solar power and throwing it out to nowhere. The ESB and EirGrid appeared before us. They are all for long duration, but they are not doing it quickly enough. We cannot tap them on the back when we should be doing it quicker. One could say they are bound by planning laws, but why are they so upset? I know they are finally turning to private wire legislation and we had a discussion on that. If any 2 GW or green hydrogen facility is going to be developed as per the hydrogen strategy, are private wires necessary to reduce the cost of the infrastructure?

Professor Barry McMullin:

I do not see a connection between those two points. Maybe the Deputy could clarify it. From my point of view, curtailment is an issue. Curtailment represents an opportunity but at the moment, the right economic incentives are not in place to make that happen. We run auctions and contract-for-difference mechanisms to promote and prompt the development of new wind or solar electricity sources. We could run a contract-for-difference mechanism for the development of electrolysers to produce hydrogen as long as it comes exclusively from what would otherwise be curtailed energy. There are certainly policy measures that could be brought forward that would address that, and I would be very much in favour of those. In the context of today's discussion, private wires are the right solution to the wrong problem. They are a great solution to constraints on grid capacity where EirGrid can build out, or where ESB Networks is already building as fast as it can and you want to get extra effort into building network capacity, but they do nothing for decarbonisation in and of themselves.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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I disagree with Professor McMullin.

Professor Barry McMullin:

It comes back to this: what are they connecting to at the other end? If they are only connecting to new or existing wind and solar facilities that would otherwise be feeding into decarbonising all our existing usage, using private wires to harvest those for new additional energy use that we never had before will not help with our decarbonisation.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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That argument is on one side-----

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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This debate can be finished within the DCU graduate community.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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That is one argument. New-build apartments with solar connections will help. Eco villages with private wires and grids will really help. That is where I think there are benefits.

Professor Barry McMullin:

I am not against private wires per se.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am just conscious of time. Professor Daly has indicated. We will do a quick second round limited to three minutes each because the Dáil is sitting shortly.

Professor Hannah Daly:

I will be very brief. In theory, once we have excess renewable energy and the strategic network is in place, Ireland may be a fantastic location to expand data centres. I would be more optimistic than Professor McMullin and would say that could happen in the 2030s but not until those conditions are in place. Right now, data centres are expanding with fossil fuels and the narrative is that is compatible with our climate goals because, in the future, they can be powered with renewables, hydrogen or whatever it is and connect to the distribution networks, but those conditions have to be in place first to be compatible with our carbon budgets.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I want to go back to the original issue for today and the change in the methodology. When we raised this with the chair of the CCAC when she was last before the committee, she said that the change in the methodology was chosen because the CCAC was adopting newer techniques being used by the IPCC and that a more comprehensive, structured approach that is being used. I would be interested in the witnesses' comments on that.

Also, with this change, and different sectors will have different carbon budgets, what will the impacts - positive or not - be? What sector will be impacted most by this change in the methodology?

Professor Hannah Daly:

I watched that session and I am afraid I did not understand the claim that the new approach was recommended or was favoured by the IPCC. The IPCC absolutely does not recommend metrics. That is up to individual governments and requires not just approaching metrics in different ways, it also requires ethical assessments, as we have presented, arguments which are under the Paris Agreement, scientific adequacy and our equitable share to the Paris Agreement. I suggest going back to the council and asking for clarity on that matter.

The sectors most affected by far are the agriculture and land use sectors because, currently, the scenarios that were shortlisted by the climate council assume, inherently, a rather strong growth in dairy output. All of the scenarios that were shortlisted by the council assume something between 28% and 48% growth in dairy output by 2050. There might be a stabilisation or small growth in the overall ruminant herd but that is predicated on a very strong decline in the suckler herd. The question is, going back to the economic imperative versus the climate imperative, are we changing the metric for 2050 to basically enable the continued growth in one of the most carbon-intensive sectors we have in Ireland?

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I thank Professor Daly. I have to rush to the Chamber but I want to make the point that this is a very technical conversation we are having and we are not climate scientists. It is not something we will get resolved and we will need to be led by scientists and the evidence on this, so I fully support the call for this to go back. The peer review by the IPCC, particularly if the Climate Change Advisory Council is referencing the IPCC as the rationale for making this change, would be the best place to go. I propose that we as a committee write to the Minister and the CCAC to reflect that call.

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I was very taken with what we said about climate justice, the fairness of the new measures and how we are taking a disproportionate share of global emissions and are eating into available carbon budgets for developing countries. We have to see this through the lens of our contribution to international development as well. I do not think we talk about that enough from a climate perspective.

Professor Daly mentioned Denmark a few times as another country that has a significant agricultural sector and, rather than being selfish about it and trying to retain as much of a methane budget for itself as it can, is making efforts and taking steps to reduce it.

In practical terms, what is Denmark doing that we are not? We have just spoken about the fact the dairy output in all scenarios will increase significantly and I am interested in learning what Denmark does differently.

Professor Hannah Daly:

There is a range of policies that are now in place especially for the agriculture sector to achieve their more ambitious targets. The political and societal arrangements that led to these ambitious policies should be investigated in terms of how they differ from the process and circumstances that Ireland faces. There are strong differences so we cannot take for granted that it would be easy to implement these policies. There was a multiyear large consultation process between the food industry, farming organisations and environmental groups, which led to a collective agreement on very ambitious measures to both regulate and support the agri-sector to transform. Those agreements have entailed a carbon tax, starting in 2030 and growing to 2035, that is implemented in a way in which a significant proportion of that would be returned to farmers and that they would be supported to take measures to decarbonise. I understand that around 10% of agricultural land would be either rewilded or planted with forestry. In some cases, there would be buy-outs of the most polluting farms, by government. Ireland really needs to learn what were the political arrangements that allowed this to happen without it exploding into it becoming a political wedge issue or a culture war because, as has been seen in the media, and for the last five years we have discussed this in Ireland, when any consideration of strong cuts in farming emissions have been proposed, it is blown up even internationally. This is something we want to avoid. We want to avoid farmers being made a scapegoat or feeling like they are unsupported or unfairly blamed.

Mr. Paul Price:

In terms of what has happened in the last 15 years, I would point out that the removal of the milk quota was a really bad decision for climate and pollution, and it has been especially the case in Ireland. The top ten milk producing countries in the EU have increased milk production by 15%, on average, and that has increased emissions to some extent. To do so, they have fewer cattle than they had previously, say in 2010. All of the other countries - the lower producers - have kept their milk production about the same but have also reduced the number of cattle. Only Ireland is an extreme outlier in terms of increasing cattle numbers dramatically in order to increase milk production, by intensifying a grass-based system, which is one of the most inefficient systems one could possibly imagine. To put that at the centre of an agricultural system is a very bad idea for food security and has misled farmers. We have put farmers in a situation where this is the way to make money. Clearly it is good profits for big business but at the same time it is very shortsighted in terms of the long-term welfare of farming, farmers and food security in Ireland and globally.

Professor Hannah Daly:

If I may raise one more study that was published recently that I co-authored. It was led by Dr. Colm Duffy from the University of Galway. The paper raises the question that often the narrative of Ireland's expansion is on the basis of our contribution to global food security and the feeding the world narrative. This paper also questions temperature neutrality as a basis for our carbon budgets. It shows that this narrative of food security is not founded in evidence because the trade between high-carbon livestock systems is largely among already developed countries where food security is not an issue. Also, it is particularly hypocritical to claim a greater share of the global methane space on the basis of the contribution to food security when that is not grounded in evidence.

Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)
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I thank our witnesses for all the comprehensive answers. I think Professor Daly answered my question. I was going to ask about the possible rationale behind this temperature neutrality approach being around accommodating the potential expansion of the herd. Having said that, the herd has contracted, albeit modestly, over the last number of years by about 4%, both in suckler and dairy. On the whole issue around the methane aspect of it, using technology-based approaches to address some of it, in particular the potential role of anaerobic digestion, there is potential there in using feedstocks that are not from cut grass but from farm slurries. The first one I ever saw developed in Ireland was in my home county of Kilkenny in Camphill in Ballytobin. That has been producing electricity and a good dry-fertiliser product for the last 20 years and yet we cannot scale up AD to a level that is required that could make a really meaningful impact on emissions.

I have a second question added to that because Professor Daly mentioned the role in Denmark. I absolutely agree with her wholeheartedly. Farmers need certainty, good advice and money for what they are doing and they are not getting it. The climate and nature fund looks like it is going to be raided as well. What we are also missing is the other piece of the jigsaw around the land use review and the potential for the nature restoration plan to have a positive impact on supporting farmers to do the right things.

Professor Hannah Daly:

I will speak briefly on AD but I am sure my colleagues will also have comments on this. Biofuels, like methane from anaerobic digestion, can be a very valuable way to turn a waste resource into a fuel and to solve a waste issue. The issue, among many, with using waste as a feedstock for biofuels inputs is that it is inherently unscaleable. The risk, depending on the financial arrangements, is that if you are creating incentives for AD, you are inherently incentivising a wasteful process. The current biofuel or biogas policy is not focused on small-scale gathering of waste as a resource and circling it back into local economies-----

Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)
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Exactly.

Professor Hannah Daly:

-----it is about wide-scale land use for a silage-based grass to create biogas. The issue is that genuinely sustainable biofuels from waste are a very small share of our overall fossil fuel demands, so that is where the issue of scale is a problem. I am sure there are other comments on methane leakage.

Professor John Sweeney:

Yes. Apart from methane leakage, the possibility of scaling up biomethane, for example, is limited. The target of replacing around 10% of Ireland's fossil gas with biomethane by 2030 is a challenging target. Teagasc has estimated this would require 120,000 ha of grassland and 20% of all winter slurry produced in Ireland. That is a huge commitment. The other side of the coin is that 1 ha of solar panels will in a year produce 100 times as much energy as the same area devoted to bio-energy. There is an easy solution here and we should not be trapped into going a very long way around to get that extra renewable energy.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I will come back in again because I am imagining what we can do as a committee and then the question of the budgets. We do have time. This is for 2020 to 2030 and it is important to get it right. Maybe as much as the peer review piece, there are certain key points that are emerging that also need to be reflected in our responsibility to the climate Act. Of course, the climate Act has the ultimate objective as regards the question of temperate and it has Article 2 in terms of the common but differentiated responsibilities. In a way, one of the issues I see with the temperature neutrality approach is that it is only addressing - perhaps in a way that is very unambiguous and I would say concerning and unpredictable - the temperature issue of 1.5°C, even though it does actually name that, just temperature stabilisation, but it is not really addressing the common but differentiated responsibility and the justice piece at all.

Also, when we talk about budgets, what we will be asked to sign off on is literally tonnages of emissions.

If we talk about like with like and the tonnages of emissions that are being proposed, the ultimate goal we are supposed to be thinking of is that we get to a point of net zero greenhouse gas emissions. That is an area where we can see the progress being made, rather than speculation as to what may be happening at an arbitrary point in the future, in terms of 2050 and what the effect might be, again with many unknowns, versus that goal. From the witnesses' perspective, is the consensus that at a minimum, net zero emissions by 2050 should be the point we are getting to and clearly moving towards?

The Danish approach is very interesting as it is net negative. Maybe it is philosophical to take another approach to that goal of a climate-neutral economy. Climate neutral could be zero in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Another way of thinking of neutral is that it is not doing damage and harm to others in an active way. It seems the Danish approach goes that bit further to net negative. It is fulfilling not just the temperature goal piece, but also aiming to deliver the element of the different responsibilities. I wish to be clear on whether it is a general consensus that such an approach on greenhouse gas, either net zero or net negative, would be more consistent and also more effective as a target.

I have two other questions. One is about the danger of things getting taken out of the balance sheet and that matters whether or not we are considering the impact on temperature or measuring whether we are at net zero in emissions, as well as the question of aviation being taken off the table. Military emissions is another area which we know internationally does not seem to be properly measured. Again, some countries will not share the figures at all. Can the witnesses comment on the danger of things that are having a real effect on the environment and warming but are not getting added to the balance sheet anywhere? I seek comments on the military piece and on that private piece that also ties in, that is, the privatisation of energy and the idea of the backup gas generators that many data centres, for example, have currently. The witnesses might comment on the idea of there being emissions separate to the grid and of certain areas of emission not getting captured in what is getting measured. I would appreciate comments on that.

I probably will not have time to ask about the 15 scenarios for which the witnesses have given really good feedback on what the measures should be. Are there also scenarios that should have been modelled that have not been? If we want to do this better and really get it right for 2030 to 2040, are there other scenarios that should be modelled? Maybe among them should be one where we factor in the reality of the United States having left the Paris Agreement and the fact that this might have to increase everybody's ambition?

Professor John Sweeney:

I will be very brief because I know my colleagues want to comment on this as well. We should remind ourselves that net zero and not climate neutrality is our obligation to the EU in terms of our 2050 commitment. We are obliged to go to that particular criterion to avoid the kinds of fines and problems we have seen in the media over the past few months.

Denmark is chairing the European Council at the moment and is part of the Commission's proposals to move to a 90% reduction for the EU by 2040, which is part of the period encompassing the period we are deliberating on today. To position Ireland to cope with a new effort-sharing arrangement that will come into play, it is very important we do get the budgets right on this occasion. It is also very important we do not fall into the trap of kicking the can down the road from our existing commitments to finalise the sectoral emissions ceilings, which have not been finalised for a long time. We need that land use report to come out. We have seen it stalled for a matter of years and it is essential to inform our discussions, to make sure that the right decisions are made, that we have the full background for that.

Professor Hannah Daly:

When it comes to our climate obligations, there are EU targets, which are framed as net zero by 2050, and that is all greenhouse gases. Ireland is party to that. Advice given to the council by Dr. Oliver Geden showed that if Ireland was to adopt temperature neutrality and not get to net zero, meaning we had ongoing emission of methane and other gases from the agriculture sector, other EU countries would have to do more to compensate for our emissions and that would be unlikely to be acceptable at the EU level. I mentioned the majority of our emissions under the effort-sharing regulation are in agriculture and we are projected to miss that 2030 target by a very substantial amount. It is far more on a per capita basis than other European countries and, as a result, we face significant compliance fines. If we are to meet the 1.5°C goal, we will have to go into long-term carbon drawdown. After whatever point that is when we reach net zero CO2 emissions, whether it is 2040 or 2050, we will have to actively draw CO2 back down from the atmosphere to make up for the lack of action in these decades. That should be accounted for in our long-term vision as well. Net zero is not enough.

The Senator asked about other scenarios and that is a critical question. What scenarios underpin the carbon budgets that were proposed by the council? I was part of the carbon budgets working group, as were many other academics and academic groups, and produced modelling studies to support the council as well as energy systems scenarios. There were two other modelling groups. Teagasc modelled agricultural decarbonisation pathways and the University of Galway modelled both agricultural scenarios and land use scenarios. The council ultimately chose two scenarios from Teagasc and a number of land use scenarios from the University of Galway study led by Dr. David Styles, but it did not choose the most ambitious of either the agriculture or land use scenarios within that set of groups and did not say why, in the ultimate decision it made and the reports it gave, it did not include more ambitious decarbonisation scenarios from the agriculture sector which show more fundamental structural change and diversification in our land use and more ambitious afforestation targets like 25,000 ha per year.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I ask Professor McMullin to be brief if he does not mind, because we are running out of time.

Professor Barry McMullin:

I will be as brief as I can. Net zero at best is about stabilising temperature and we have had the discussion that stabilisation is not enough, so I do not disagree with the Senator that improving or clarifying that net zero by 2050 would be useful. Calibrating our effort against the global temperature goal is essential. That is the only way we know whether our efforts are commensurate with the absolute temperature rise, so it is really important we do that as well.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Professor McMullin is saying it is a case of "both and".

Professor Barry McMullin:

It is "both and". We only got that temperature test belatedly from the council. It was treating it as if this temperature neutrality somehow substituted for measuring-----

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Emissions reduction, but Professor McMullin is saying emissions reduction to zero or negative, plus an assessment of whether that is doing enough.

Professor Barry McMullin:

It is assessment of the emissions and, in the meantime, how much temperature rise they are going to contribute to.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Okay.

Professor Barry McMullin:

That was the bit that was missing. On the question of things being left off the balance sheet, like international aviation and shipping, it is really important so I completely agree on that. What can I say about military emissions? For various reasons they have been excluded and they are obviously growing. Increasing conflict is terrible on so many fronts, but it has a climate impact as well and we need to be aware of that.

On the scenarios, this is my final point but I do not want to dodge this discussion. The thrust of the critique we have offered is it appears the budgets proposed by the council are probably too high. They represent a disproportionate claim, an unfair claim, on the available global effort. However, the budget came from these underlying scenarios which are already extremely stringent.

If that were to be revisited and the outcomes were to be, as we anticipate, that the proposed budgets were too high or not really compatible with fair share, then revisiting the scenarios, as Professor Daly has said, to look much more closely at additional or more stringent scenarios would be necessary. That may still leave a gap. The conclusion of that exercise may be that we will not see any way that is politically, socially and economically acceptable for Ireland to meet its fair share or live within its fair share. I do not want to jump ahead to that discussion too quickly but if that is where the discussion goes, it is better to have it openly and honestly than pretend it is not the case.

Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank all the witnesses for coming in. They were invited in by the members to provide a perspective on what the CCAC put forward and they have done that, without a doubt. I will recap, in my layperson's terms, what the witnesses have raised. First was temperature neutrality as a model and methodology. It effectively shields methane, for want of a better description. Using 2020 as a reference year was also mentioned. Categories like aviation and shipping being left out of the model may not be an Irish-only issue but, nonetheless, it is an issue. Those seem to be, by my layman's reading, the three main issues.

The transcript of this meeting will go online. I hope the witnesses are all okay with that. I thank them for coming in.