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A REDUCTION IN VAT, an extra €100 fuel allowance payment and the elimination of the PSO levy are among measures confirmed today aimed at offsetting the burden of energy price hikes.
A new National Energy Security Framework examines Ireland’s energy needs amid Russia’s war on Ukraine and how it will deal with ‘potential shocks’ to the energy system.
The framework, published by the Department of the Environment, sets out measures to manage the impact of price increases on consumers and businesses in the short-term, maintain a secure supply, and reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels in line with the EU’s plan to cut out Russian energy.
VAT on gas and electricity will be reduced from 13.5% to 9%, as previously reported by The Journal, from May until October and recipients of the fuel allowance will receive an additional €100 payment.
The Public Service Obligation Levy, which is charged to all electricity customers through their bills, should be fully removed by October 2022.
Currently, the levy is €4.30 per month (excluding VAT). Inclusive of VAT, it adds up to €58.57 per year.
The existing reduction in excise duty on petrol, diesel and marked gas oil will continue until October 2022 when the next Budget is announced instead of ending in August.
€20 million is being allocated to installing solar panels for households with a heavy dependence on energy supply, such as people who need energy for at-home medical equipment.
Measures will be implemented to increase protections for financially vulnerable people and customers in debt, such as asking suppliers to work more closely with people in debt and provide options like an extended payment plan. It will look at where customers can get a lower price on their bills by renegotiating with their current supplier rather than needing to switch.
The framework references actions that are already planned under other strategies, such as developing a national policy statement on heat with a focus on decarbonising buildings and developing district heating.
It also reiterates the government’s plans to retrofit homes and invest in the transport sector to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Electricity customers with a smart metre are to be given better access to their data and consumption patterns to select the tariff that’s most appropriate for them.
Additionally, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities will examine charges within its remit to ensure the differential between peak and off-peak tariffs allows customers to save money by moving some energy use to off-peak times.
The war in Ukraine
Ireland has established an Energy Security Emergency group in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The emergency group is reviewing and testing Ireland’s oil, natural gas and electricity emergency plans and procedures to examine how they would stand up if the conflict in Ukraine escalates further.
In March, the European Commission presented a plan to rein in Europe’s dependence on Russia for fossil fuels by two-thirds before the end of 2022.
The outline of the REPowerEU plan said the measures could cut 155 billion cubic metres (bcm) of Europe’s fossil gas use, which is the same volume that was imported from Russia last year.
The EU imports 90% of the gas that it consumes, with almost half (45%) typically sourced in Russia, as well as 25% of oil imports and 45% of coal imports.
The latest round of EU sanctions banned Russian coal imports into the bloc, though an embargo on gas and oil remained more contentious given some members states’ heavy dependence.
This morning, Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council published a letter to the government telling it that Ireland must reduce its reliance on fossil fuel imports.
In the letter, which was addressed to the coalition leaders with the finance and public expenditure ministers CCed, the Council said the crisis in Ukraine “further emphasises the urgency with which we need to reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels”.
It told the government that “length and delayed planning timelines” are impeding renewable energy projects and “critical” grid infrastructure.
“The Council is concerned that the current timelines for delivery of core measures [in the Climate Action Plan] are too long and the procedures to facilitate the delivery of these measures are not progressing fast enough.”
The Council said it supports the carbon tax being charged and the revenue being used to fund climate plans and emphasised that people most vulnerable and most impacted by energy issues must be protected.
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Have these people no work to go to?
@Josh Hanners: NO.
@Josh Hanners: I find this response childish and churlish. I for one worked all my life at different times and nearly always at weekends.
@Josh Hanners: they probably do but they choose not to.
@Bernard Kavanagh: So they’re all shiftworkers?
@Josh Hanners: you’re right. There are more important things in life than protesting during work hours. And I for one am not going to support anybody who doesn’t work or the causes that these layabouts support. Delhi is fake news : these wasters are the real pollution
@Josh Hanners: I will be there as a pensioner , for me it’s so Important to support this action. The future of this planet is a priority, especially for the future of our next generations. What you prioritise I haven’t a clue?
@Josh Hanners: Its called ‘Lunch time’ ! Taking your lunch break to do something about climate and biodiversity breakdown….
@Bernard Kavanagh: I’ll do my bit when private jets and cruise liners are banned.
Until then, I carry on as is.
@Josh Hanners: I hope it freezes and pis s rain while they do their beach stunt.
I will be at home in with a nice warm stove and a nice stack of firewood coal with turf.
@Josh Hanners: they could book time off and if that’s what they believe in so be it don’t be a hater son
They might need to rethink the wardrobe in that rain…..
the only way for Ireland to fight climate change is to increase taxes on middle income families. Bankrupting the squeezed middle is the only way we will guarantee a future for our children
@Dean Anderson: nonsense unsubstantiated comment but apparently popular with “put upon” Journo readers. Ther are lots of ways to combat climate change beyond taxation. Unfortunately FFG are bereft of ideas.
@Dean Anderson: the middle class buy products sold by the upper class and made by the working class.
Something tells me this will be like when I was a kid and went to Spain on holidays and saw there was a nudist beach. There weren’t too many beautiful young bodies to see.
He fell just short of saying “What’s the point of doing anything, because y’know China and India?”
@Paraic: fully agreed look at India at the moment you could barely see your hands in front of you with the smog all this because is a developing country and neighbouring countries burning land and stubble. In reality what difference is a little country in the Atlantic going to make
@In my opinion: Fake news. An Indian person only produces 1/4 the CO2 of an Irish person. India has being embracing sustainable energy, to the point that it’s likely to reach it’s Paris accord agreement 10 years ahead of its goal. “TOP OF THE CLASS: INDIA: India has emerged as a global leader in renewable energy, and in fact it is investing more in them than it is in fossil fuels. Having established a goal of generating 40 percent of its power through renewables by 2030, its progress has been so rapid that it could easily reach that target a decade early.”
https://tinyurl.com/yy6lqbum
Same story with China: https://tinyurl.com/y5v6qt9b
@In my opinion: Are you really saying that Ireland and presumably the 110 other similar sized or smaller countries should be off the hook, because look over there China and India are doing nothing (a false statement)? Would the UK be big enough? What’s your size threshold before countries should bother?
@Stephen McCluskey: Smog and CO2 are two completely different things. A brief cooling around the 1940s is attributable to smog due to the industrial effort of WWII. It may not be desirable, but it’s also not the cause of global warming. Also, did you check to see how climate change increases the hang time of smog? “Wind usually helps blow away smog, but changes in weather patterns in recent decades have left many of China’s most populous cities poorly ventilated, scientists say.”
@In my opinion: What sort of an attitude is that? if we all think like that nothing will change and if we think any other way nothing will change so I suggest you listen to the climate change agitators and get on board with their message as life will be a lot easier for you in the long run even if nothing you or I do will have any impact on the changing climate.
@Paraic: Extract from a 2017 report from the IER: “With the United States on its way to official withdrawal, China and Germany are expected to take the lead promoting the Paris Agreement.[i] This is despite China’s role in constructing over 700 new coal-fired power plants around the world. According to Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin, some of these new coal plants will be built in countries that burn little or no coal today. While many of the coal plants will be located in China, about one-fifth of the capacity of these new coal power plants is going to be located in other countries.[ii]
China is not alone in constructing coal-fired power plants. According to Urgewald, about 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries; this data comes from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. If constructed, these new plants would increase global coal-fired capacity by 43 percent. According to Urgewald, 11 of the world’s 20 biggest coal plant developers are Chinese.”
“The world’s largest coal-plant developer, however, is India’s National Thermal Power Corporation, which plans to build over 38 gigawatts of new coal capacity in India and Bangladesh. India’s state-run power utility plans to invest $10 billion in new coal-fired power stations over the next five years. Despite several relatively new coal-fired plants being idle, it plans to build three new plants with a combined capacity of over 5 gigawatts. The new plants consist of two 660 megawatt units: one is being built at Singrauli in central India’s Madhya Pradesh and the other at Talcher in Odisha in the east. Its biggest plant will have a capacity of 2.4 gigawatts and will be located in the eastern state of Jharkhand. The new coal-fired plants will be “supercritical” plants that are 2 to 3 percent more efficient than conventional plants and therefore have lower emissions.”
@Blessopaddy: “That American think tank is the Institute for Energy Research, which has received $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998 and unknown additional sums from other oil and coal industry sources. The Guardian reported last year that the Institute for Energy Research has received recent funding from KBR and trusts set up by Koch Industries, which has multiple ties to IER and its sister organization American Energy Alliance. Danish journalists have confirmed that The Institute for Energy Research commissioned and paid for the anti-wind energy study released last year by a Danish think tank that claimed Denmark exaggerates the amount of wind energy it produces (it doesn’t), and asserted that the U.S. should choose coal over wind because it’s cheaper.
…sooooo a history of fossil fuel vested interest finding and straight up lying. Do you even believe it yourself or just trolling?
@Paraic: All reports are biased, whether they’re produced by left wing or right wing think-tanks. I guess that’s why ordinary punters such as ourselves find the unadulterated truth is often hard to come by. But any number of reports have stated that China and India – though reducing their dependency – are still heavily involved, and continue to invest, in coal produced power – and as do many other countries. As for Denmark, I’ll leave the last word with the Wind Denmark web site: https://en.winddenmark.dk/wind-in-denmark/current-energy-production – well done the Danes!
@Blessopaddy: So the publishings of a madey up Institute for Energy Research founded by Charles Koch of Koch Industries and CEO Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive, with the sole interest of promoting the use of fossil fuels and to discredit renewable energy with lies, is the same as peer reviewed science research or genuinely independent journalism? Give over. This is no “think tank”, it’s a blatantly obvious sockpuppet fake news outlet directly funded by and chaired by fossil fuel magnates.
@Paraic: of course and all the “research” you want to believe is real because it is peer reviewed by who? Peers who all believe the sane thing. Fact is all these “models” use made up constants and assumptions to fit the scientists agendas or more precisely the agendas of those that are paying their grants. I’m not saying climate change isn’t happening, just wake up anf stop believing everything you are told, its called being gullible.
@Blessopaddy: OK I missed part of your post. Denmark is doing great with wind energy. I don’t agree that it’s difficult to separate truthful articles from fake news. You have to look at who is behind the source of the data.
I already knew that China are embracing renewable energy and switching from coal from New Scientist magazine, which I happen to know it’s a highly reliable and trustworthy source that I’ve been reading since my college days. When I read your post, I instantly knew that it was full of lies and disinformation. I hadn’t heard of “Institute of Energy Research”, but it was obvious that it was the voice of vested interests. A quick Google search confirmed it. People need to stop taking stuff at face value. We now live in an age of sponsored disinformation.
@Dino: You don’t need to refer to models if you don’t like them because you don’t understand how they or science works. California is already burning. This graph is not from a model, it’s real world data. Time to wake up! Being able to read and interpret it, is not being gullible. https://tinyurl.com/yxwc6bbd
Time to wake up!
@Paraic: thanks; I didn’t know that
@Paraic: so California and the likes has never gone through this in the history of the world before cars and man made pollution?
@Dino: No, not in at least the last 10,000 years.
@Paraic: but before that it has? Hmm wonder what might have caused it then?
There is no climate man made change…
… said no climatologist ever.
@Gerard Casserly: says the idiots who cannot read or understand science.
They all have lovely bottoms.
well need the ‘warmer winters’ to avoid our elderly relatives ,the disabled ,homeless and the poor from freezing to death through fuel poverty -thanks to the increases in carbon tax and pso levies introduced by his government !! he really does not give a shi*
The whole thing is cringe. Go back to work, bloody bunch of good for nothing hippies
Not too many serious comments so far, so let me put the thing in contextt. For many reasons, Nasa’s model predicts that global warming due to human activity should begin to taper off towards the end of this century. By then however, the beaches along with many coastal cities will probably be under water at low tide and there’ll be a lot more rain. Increased temperatures and humidity along with that exposed and ice-free tundra will encourage insects to take over from us and not the nice guys like bees. Happy New Monday.
@Denis McClean: ok Denis.
My argument is we are a field in the middle of the Atlantic. We account for less than .1% of carbon emissions. We are been hit with carbon taxes and what not.
Are the folk in India China or the US been hit with all these charges or are they making changes to their lives to help climate. It’s all in vein until they step up. My money will stay in my pocket
@Stephen: China and India are not only doing something, they’re both world leaders in embracing renewable energy and are 8 to 9 years ahead of the Paris agreement. The US is doing virtually nothing and is simultaneously the worst polluter on the globe. Their excuse, “Why should we do anything until India and China do something first?” With respect to Ireland being small, so are 110 other countries. Are we not part of the EU? Why is the EU exempt from carrying any of the burden? Most EU countries produce 4 times the CO2 per capita as India.
@Stephen: Point taken but carbon taxes may be an infantile solution but they are also a seperate issue.
Pull mercosur off the table immediately.
@Declan O Toole: And eat less beef….
These wasters shouldn’t be covered in the news.. Serious gap in the market for a non polarized news source
Yayyyy
Who ties his shoelaces?
That sounds like a lot of arrests for indecent exposure!!
When are the farmers having their bi annual fodder crisis m
When they hide their 19 2 crew cabs and go begging and pretending to be broke
That will take the smile off Leo’s face
Can’t anyone take a joke anymore????
@Colm Walsh: Are you joking !
All putting their little heads together brainstorming: Now what can we do to get ourselves in the media next week? actually caring about the future of the earth does not take precedence over themselves. attention seeking gobs**es
@Pauline Gallagher: You seem to really care Pauline, good on you, why don’t you go outside and hug the earth or a tree or something. It will probably have as big an impact on global climate change as anything else you or anyone else in this country will have. A lot of people (who are educated and should really know better) will say that we have a responsibility and that loads of other small countries doing something will have an impact. It won’t, FACT! just look at the numbers. The only chance people have of positively impacting climate change is if the big countries put their shoulders to the wheel. In the meantime all the rest of us mugs are doing is just putting ourselves into penury to masage the ego’s of the climate change nazi’s.
@Dino: Climate change doesn’t respect borders. 5 million people anywhere on Earth is 5 million people. What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask you what contribution you made to prevent the world from burning? Will you look them in the eyes and say “I am from a small country of 5 million and I thought to myself, what good could 5 million people possibly do? So I did nothing.”
@Paraic: like it or lump it dino is correct
@Paraic: I’ll tell them a bunch of idiots like paraic did their damndest but didn’t make a blind bit of difference as their was 1.4bn people in another country who decided to go a different route. If you were in a barrell and 280 people started pissing into it do you think you could throw enough piss out with an egg cup to save yourself (accepting they have unlimited bladders)?
@Dino: Classy analogy. Except everyone is in the barrel and everyone has an eggcup and most people think it’s a good idea to use it to bail, except you. You must like drowning in your own piss.
@Paraic: err as per most of your posts you just don’t understand the analogy. The 280 people are just the Chinese as they have roughly 280 for every person we have in Ireland, so no not everyone is in the barrell. The whole point was if everyone was in the barrell bailing it out there would be less people filling it and more people emptying it leading to the possibility of us making a difference. You my lost man ha e zero chance of making an impact on climate change the same as everone in Ireland and even in Europe I would say. The only way there is any chance (if you believe climate change is man made) is if china, us, india, and all the other big polluters decide to do something about it. I know its sad to think you can’t make a difference with your little crusade but it is wasted effort I’m afraid.
@Dino: I understood the analogy. I was pointing out that it’s flawed. Because in reality everyone is in the barrel and there are another 120 guys like Ireland in there too representing other small countries. Should they do anything? Why do you bother getting out of bed with that mentality.
@Paraic: I bother getting out of bed as life goes on regardless, I don’t need to be an attention seeking agitator to make my life feel worthwhile. Your response clearly shows you don’t get the analogy as all these 120 small countries like Ireland are still vastly outnumbered by the super countries and while it might hurt your little head to accept it there really isn’t any alternative
I’m so glad these wastes of space and oxygen I.e. the Extinction Rebellion mish mash have the time to take days off to protest over BS!! Varadkar, who I don’t have any time for, in this case, his comments were reasonable, accurate and balanced. I can only come to one of two conclusions, this mish mash must either have very reasonable bosses or two, the haven’t worked a day in their lives. I’m inclined to go with the latter!!
Jaysus lads, I don’t like Leo much at all but he was just making a valid enough point. He’s not saying he supports it, he’s just stating that it is an aspect of climate change
Vote Cowan – Dickie
So you think that as a head of a country, climate change is only a problem…when it reaches your country?! And still don’t see the reality in California which is in flames ‘Because they don’t don’t sweep their own forests?!’ Leo?! That sounds like two really smart men to me. Talking to their own people while being head of the countries.
I hope the weather holds fine for them tis a bit chilly to be out in a bikini there’ll be nipples like bullets
Colcannon must be holidays
God …what a stupid thing to say. The spin doctors need to reign Mr varadkar in.
Sounds like a might in the George ..
Colcannon must be on holidays
There won’t be a an Ireland in 20 Years time anyways Taoiseach So do t worry your little cotton socks.
have your say