Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The recent EPA report makes it clear we have to act now on climate change and reduce emissions. To reverse the trajectory and meet our 2030 climate targets, a significant shift is required in the speed at which we roll-out and ramp-up the policies and measures that will decarbonise our economy. The Climate Action Plan 2023 sets out our roadmap for systemic changes to reach those objectives. We need to act much faster and with greater ambition and scale to implement the actions set out in the plan.

The recent EPA report has projected that Ireland is on course to reduce emissions by 29% by 2030 under its with-additional-measures scenario. The EPA's projections do not fully reflect the pathway set out in the climate action plan. This is because sufficient data is not yet available to allow all policies and measures in the Climate Action Plan 2023 to be modelled. Policies and measures need to meet strict criteria regarding detail for inclusion in the EPA's with-additional-measures scenario. The EPA's projections report acknowledges that if all of the unmodelled policies and measures and the as yet unallocated emissions savings are included, the reduction in emissions would equate to 42% by 2030.

Further detail on this will be provided through annual updates to the climate action plan. I want to give three significant examples of areas that are not accounted for in the recent EPA projections that will be highly impactful once modelled. First are the diversification measures in agriculture that are capable of delivering significant reductions. Second, in electricity, the EPA’s modelling only considers a reduced level of the total targets for onshore wind and solar photovoltaic. Finally, in industry, measures to reduce embodied carbon in construction materials are not modelled.

In addition, the EPA’s modelling cannot include the unallocated emission savings of 26.25 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which has been assigned to the second carbon budgetary period of 2026 to 2030.

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