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IRELAND MUST STOP using harmful fossil fuels by 2039 to have a chance of achieving climate action targets, the Climate Change Advisory Council has said.
New advice for policymakers details that Ireland must reduce its emissions by an average of at least 6.3% each year.
That’s in order to try reach an overall reduction of 67% by 2040 (relative to 2018) so that Ireland can comply with legally binding targets and play its part to help prevent global climate catastrophe.
Driving down excessive emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane has been a challenge for Ireland in recent years. Last year was the first time there was a tangible sign of real progress being achieved, with the lowest emissions recorded of any year in last three decades.
However, there’s still a lot of work facing the incoming government.
A crucial step is to phase out harmful fossil fuels by as soon as 2039, a panel of experts has said.
In particular, decarbonising the energy sector, which still relies on fossil fuels like gas and oil, will be key.
The Climate Change Advisory Council, tasked with equipping Ireland’s policymakers with information on how to tackle the climate crisis, has proposed new carbon budgets to limit the country’s emissions reductions in the years to 2040.
Ireland’s first carbon budgets, which were created in 2021, set out the amount of emissions that the country can afford to produce over three five-year cycles (2021-2025, 2026-2030 and 2031-2035) – though compliance within the first few years of the current, first budget was poor.
Now, the Council has proposed a fourth carbon budget from 2036 to 2040 that says the country should limit itself to 120 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (the metric used to measure greenhouse gas emissions) in total across those four years.
In comparison, the current carbon budget cycle allocated 295 megatonnes in total between 2021 and 2025.
The Council has stressed that this scale of change in Ireland’s emissions will require significant action by the government.
It said although there are upfront investment costs involved, it would be more expensive to delay action and then be burdened by the costly impacts of climate change and continued dependence on fossil fuels.
Chairperson Marie Donnelly explained that although the budgets are “challenging”, they are “necessary” for Ireland to become carbon-neutral before 2050, as well as halting Ireland’s contribution to climate change.
Donnelly said the transition “will bring significant political and social challenges” but that it also “presents us with an opportunity to achieve a more sustainable society, a cleaner environment with improved health and well-being for all of our citizens”.
Council member Professor Peter Thorne of Maynooth University warned that the proposal for 2040 has not baked in any potential overshoot of emissions that could happen between now and 2030.
“If emissions exceed the agreed carbon budget, then the exceedance must be deducted from the next carbon budget,” he cautioned.
That means that exceeding the carbon budgets for the years between now and 2030 would make the 2040 target harder to achieve.
The last government coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party established the carbon budgets in line with efforts to make sure Ireland complies with legally binding climate targets at home and abroad.
Now, after last month’s election, it will be up to the next government to ensure Ireland stays within those targets (or, if they fail, to face the prospect of the State paying hefty fines).
“A crucial step to help achieve [the budgets] is for government to prioritise investment and resources now by phasing out harmful fossil fuels as early as 2039 and saving people and businesses money,” said Marie Donnelly.
She explained that this would help Ireland to “avoid future fines and compliance costs, provide the opportunity to deliver energy independence, reduce costs and help to maintain our competitive economy in a low carbon world, while building greater resilience to the impacts of climate change”.
Donnelly added that the process of change must be managed “carefully” and “in a way which ensures that potential impacts on people, communities and nature are properly addressed”.
“Mobilising financial supports, quickly, will help people and households, in both urban and rural communities, as well as the most impacted sectors, take action at the speed and scale required. We also need to see the upskilling of people and businesses for new technologies and practices, while reskilling those sectors that are most impacted,” she said.
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100s of thousands of houses depend on a fire/stove to adequately heat their house in addition to oil/gas heating. The vast majority of these houses will not work using modern heating methods unless 60 to 80 thousand is spent upgrading and air tightening these houses. If it’s an absolute requirement then grants much higher than currently on offer and suppliers of the required refurbishments need to be massively increased.
@Eddie Garvey: No. all you have to is just keep burning your turf/coal/wood. What is anyone going to do? Is the Gardaí going to come arrest you for keeping yourself warm? No.
@Maximilian Kolbe: were you around during “pandemic”? Yes, they will arrest you.
@Oh Mammy: Frightening true… my little Brother’s friend who is a student was brought to Court for exceeding the 5km on his own taking photos for his photography course up the Dublin mountains. He was fined €600 and given a suspended sentence. My reaction was WTF were 2 members of AGS doing driving around isolated forest areas in the first place??
@Dave G Doe: Tyres? Good man
@Daratheprofessional 1: and pallets,he’s an orange man
@Donna Fallon: They were doing their job and they caught an offender.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: a frightening preview into how easily we could turn into a fascist state and how willing the guards and courts are to play along. I guess we’ll have to wait for the multimillion official enquiry to explain it all away.
@Eddie Garvey: wood is not a fossil fuel… You can continue to burn wood.
@Eddie Garvey: As I have seen it, the big retrofit schemes are mainly
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: Eh a teenager walking alone in a forest doing something productive minding his own business?? I was homeless in North Inner City Dublin during the lockdowns km’s away from my previous home… people getting mugged and their heads kicked off them- didn’t see any so-called dutiful Gardaí patrolling that area… but yeah let’s drive up to the middle of nowhere and find these evil lawbreakers.
@Eddie Garvey: As I have seen it, retrofit schemes are for people on welfare that get it done for nothing or wealthy people that can afford to spend 300k+ on a full house makeover. The rest of us just keep paying our carbon taxes an our vat on anything we buy to make our houses a bit warmer.
The reality is that there isn’t enough capacity in the trades if we all wanted our homes upgraded immediately. The other reality is that our electricity is nearly the highest cost in the world and also struggling to meet existing demands. Never mind meeting additional demand for heating every house, factory, office block, shopping centre, asylum centre, schools, etc – as well as changing all our transport to electric.
There’s no road map to eliminate fossil fuel in 50 years, never mind 15.
@Thomas Sheridan: Not really, unprecedented times. The majority of people will do what they need to for the greater good of others….. Then there are the rest who just do what they want and only care about themselves….. There’s more important things to worry about in life than the potential of Ireland to become a fascist state. We are too free thinking in Ireland. The Gardai even tried to get rid of their boss. The DF are also having a go at govt and are sick of being treated like dirt
@Donna Fallon: yep, he broke the rule didn’t he?….. They can’t be everywhere and stop everything. Those Gardai were obviously posted near there and have nothing to do with inner city patrolling. The inner city stuff was an issue for Store street Gardai or whatever station covers the area you’re talking about. Maybe lodge a complaint with them about their performance then. They are under resourced and mismanaged if you haven’t been reading the news in recent years.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: lol I unfortunately am very familiar with Store Street and the force in general… I said to that teenager that he should have asked why 2 male members of AGS were driving through Pine Forest during a ridiculous lockdown in the first place.
@Maximilian Kolbe: gardaĺ ? What’s that?
@Eddie Garvey: I look forward to seeing Leinster house being wrapped in external insulation and heated with a massive heat pump.
@Dave G Doe: Well if you talk like a Fascist…
@Donna Fallon: Maybe on a break from work. Who knows. At least they did their job
@jiminybillybob: hi Jim. The Gardaí is the police force of Ireland.
Lord save us from these so called climate reports, nobody of consequence cares anymore.
@Dave G Doe:
It’s a middle class,Trinity college doomsday cult..we’re all going to die,but let’s go on holliers to Italy first,oh can we Daddy?
@Ned: you think sticking your head in the sand is a helpful strategy
@Name: less co2 in the atmosphere.
@Jonn: totally agree all the woke students coming out of the colleges is ridiculous,as,well as the teacher training college’s
@Name: no just being realistic like you should be and you’re climate cult friends. Anyway you can’t be taken seriously with a moniker like yours.
@pauley870:
Now a days, they are coming out dumber then they went in.
Yea china India biggest pollution on the planet but a fire to keep warm is the problem
@Darragh Mcnamara: its a joke and all rammed at us to scare the be jays us out of ye, few more taxes will sort it from Ireland
@Darragh Mcnamara: so asking other countries to reduce their emissions, while Ireland sits on its arse is an attitude you support? I suppose it’s an attitude expected from a lifetime on the dole, making others sweat for your reward.
@Darragh Mcnamara: well without going global, reducing the use of fossil fuels will improve the quality of the air you breathe in your own lungs. From a health perspective, this should make it worthwhile I think.
@Dave G Doe: The less oil we import, the more energy we generate ourselves, the more money we keep in the country.
Does that trigger your selfish gene enough?
@Brendan O’Brien: nice one
What’s the next fear mongering thing they will use? It was acid rain for a long time and that soon stopped , then it was the ozone layer and that soon stopped and now its global warming. Seems like there is constantly something always been pushed on us. I just find it hard to believe that they can’t predict the weather for next week but they can tell us what it will be like in 100-150 years. Not saying they couldn’t be correct but I just find it hard to get behind 100% .
@tony hilton: Acid rain was greatly reduced because regulations around the amount of sulphates being released into the air were brought in and strongly enforced. The ozone layer is repairing itself and is no longer an environmental crisis because the use of harmful CFC gasses was eliminated. These problems didn’t just “go away”— they were dealt with through environmental regulation.
I’m actually interested in reading these. Can you suggest a good source so I can educate myself some more on these issues , cheers
@Brendan O’Brien: thank you brendan.
@Ajax Penumbra: Ozone is now considered the third most worrying ‘green house gas’ – after CO2 & Methane. Were we wrong to implement the policies to protect ozone when we did?
Btw, by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas in the earth’s atmosphere is water vapour.
What do you think the climate models do with water vapour when they make their climate projections?
They ignore it. So the most prevalent factor in the climate fear industry is completely ignored. That’s why the climate doom mongers projections are wrong.
It’s a case of rubbish in/rubbish out.
Only one nation’s climate change models include water vapour in their calculations. Their projections have historically been the most accurate. That country concluded there is no climate alarm.
The rest of the fear mongering industry ignore the projections of the most accurate predictor of climate modelists.
@Raymond Gilbourne: ‘Some people mistakenly believe water vapor is the main driver of Earth’s current warming. But increased water vapor doesn’t *cause* global warming. Instead, it’s a consequence of it. Increased water vapor in the atmosphere amplifies the warming caused by other greenhouse gases.’
@Raymond Gilbourne: We need that Ozone layer to protect us from harmful UV radiation
We would not survive without it.
@tony hilton: global warming is so yesterday. Now it’s the ambiguous “climate change”, catch-all fear-mongering tactic.
Funnily enough the impact on our ‘emissions’ of endless inward migration needing hundreds of thousands of new houses and everything else it entails is never mentioned! I guess another million or two people in the country doesn’t impact our environmental footprint,same way it doesn’t impact the housing crisis? Funny how that works,isn’t it?
@Jonn: ina similar vein – if they really cared about the environment and Irelands emmisions why allow so many data centres to be built?
@Jonn: Why of course it doesn’t,you don’t actually take the “Journalists” on The Journal seriously do you?
A bunch of snowflakes who never did a hard day’s work in their life but can write a good waffle.
@Jonn: Too true. The same people that promote endless illegal immigration are also the ones that bleat about our high carbon emissions from cement production to give just one example. But they don’t have enough rain cells to link the two together.
@Thomas Sheridan: That comment makes me wonder how many “rain” cells you have!
@Thomas Sheridan:
They never seem willing or able to join the dots,for some unfathomable reason,it’s easier to just bleat about the ‘far right’,'racists’ yada yada!
@Sean Hayes:
Maybe you should enlighten Thomas with your higher wisdom,instead of just pouncing on a typo to mock him? We’re waiting…..
@Atlas Collapsed:
They all have mobile phones
which they are not prepared to give up using.
Time to stop paying the expenses of these so called CCAC experts…. that’ll soon put a stop to their alarmist hot air waffle. I’ve been without electricity from 0400 hrs on 07/12 until 15.45 hrs on 11/12. Some chance I’ll give up the Logs, Turf and Smokey Coal
@Richard More-O’Ferrall: doesn’t matter, you need an EV as well. Can’t charge it due to sustained power cut? Even better!
@Richard More-O’Ferrall: my father in-law did the same. Now has emphysema. Never smoked. Stubbornness kills.
@Name: My father in law smoked cigars, every day all his life.
Died from pneumonia he picked up while in hospital for a broken hip. Aged 96.
What’s your point, everyone dies from something.
@John K: Try refuelling your ICE car at a garage during a “sustained power cut”.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I have a 12v fuel pump that can be used in such a scenario. Runs from cigarette lighter in car.
Already, trees are being cut down around here, for heating homes because of high cost of alternative fuels. The climate watchdog is another expensive ,unelected ,NGO.
Ireland the least of the world’s worries.
@Jack: yes we can stop using ‘fossil’ fuels at the same time as the USA stops using ‘fossil’ fuels
They can get lost. Wont stop me burning my turf in my home.
So the West has created another hotbed of Jihadists in Syria in its quest for perpetual war.
@Dere: Describe the “west”. What is the “west”, are you using not because you are clueless about the situation?
@Alex: What is a jihadi for 1000 Alex?
@Dere: Can you not just be glad that a vicious tyrant had been overthrown?
Let’s wait for Brendan to pontificate before we lose the run of ourselves……..
Unless there is a drastic drop in the worlds population the carbon issue will be very hard to address fully
@Dr Albert S Meinheimer: UN predictions are for a population peak of 11 billion, after which it will begin to decline.
Their predictions to date have been pretty accurate.
Not long now before we get smoke inspectors wandering around your neighbourhood looking for any smoke coming from your chimney,Calling to your house and issuing you with a fine for having a fire of any sort
@Johnny King: dont be giving them ideas ffs..
@Johnny King: They might just re-use the old TV set Detector Van if they just pump up the tyres.
@Johnny King: I have been measuring the air quality at my house independently now for a while and am happy to report that my solid fuel output has a better AQ Index than traffic in the next town, or indeed in a highly frequented leisure and recreation promoted outdoor area near us.
So while we kill ourselves reducing our fossil fuel usage, the USA, China, the Opec+ countries continue to pump out oil and gas and burn coal. Hmm, seems like we’re wasting our time
@Seddick Mage: If we stop burning it, there will be no point in them producing it.
F?€£ing yawn!!!!!!!
We need to start building nuclear power stations and ban nimbyism!
@Alan Kennedy: There’s no need for nuclear. We can get all our power from wind , solar, .and battery storage
@alan wallace:
No wind no sunshine today.
Need a battery the size of your box room to run your house for a couple of days.
Don’t be fooled
@H Woo: You need to educate yourself on battery storage technology .
@alan wallace: Is there enough mineable lithium available to build batteries to power the world?
@alan wallace: I presume that you’ve reviewed copy of that whitepaper, could you summarise it for me please? Thanks in advance.
@alan wallace: I’ve written a whitepaper on how Ireland can generate all of the power that it will ever need, using hamsters. We just need millions of hamster wheels and hamsters to run in them. We shall grow vast fields of lettuce to feed the hamsters. What you think? Clever eh? Problem solved.
@FlipBip: There’s plenty of articles and videos online about non-lithium battery storage you to review .
@alan wallace: And yet you chose to send me a whitepaper that can’t be immediately viewed. You’ve read it though, yeah? So why not tell me what it says?
@FlipBip: https://www.enelgreenpower.com/learning-hub/renewable-energies/storage/beyond-lithium
You can read this
@alan wallace: Ah hang on. I want to know about the first link you sent. What does it say? I didn’t request and review the whitepaper, like you did. What does it say?
@FlipBip: I don’t know, I didn’t review it either
@FlipBip: The future is wind, solar battery storage. Fossil fuels are on the way out.
@alan wallace: I knew you were a spoofer from the get go. Thanks for just confirming it for everyone else :-)
@FlipBip: What a m0r0n
@alan wallace: Well at least I don’t go around telling people to educate themselves and then send links to things that I never read, as proof of my “education.” You’ve just made a fool of yourself publicly, so it’s no surprise that you are now resorting to name calling. Have a nice day, better luck next time.
@H Woo: Correct, Google ‘Dunkelflaute’ for calculated cost in Germany.
Like that’s going to happen.
Eh data centers?
Blah blah blah, tax the vulnerable again. Blah blah data centres, china toys, runners clothes okay.
Just take the duty off HVO. Problem solved……unless of course its not actually a problem and more to do with screwing us for a new London style ULEZ charge to fund ehh….stuff. The kite flying air pollution reports all over the media in recent days and this very report all build up to ULEZ which has already been flogged to a government ‘friend’ to manage.
What will be the carbon footprint of the 100,000s of new homes that they say they want to build? And what about all of our new arrivals? Surely someone who is living in a shanty town in Nigeria has a lower carbon footprint than the average person living here? Is it conducive to lowering emissions, to bring 10,000s of people here? Something isn’t adding up folks.
In the 1890s the Swedish chemist Arrhenius was the first to explain the link between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature. The dangers of rising CO2 levels were realised in the late 1960s. Now we are stumbling through the actual implications. We cannot keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. It MUST decrease.
@Me Me: Arrhenius also found that the ability of CO2 to absorb energy was inversely logarithmic, I.e. it diminishes as the concentration increases.
The fools who protested againced Ireland considering building atomic power stations in the 70s in Wexford, are the same doom lovers around today looking for alternatives to fossel fuels.
@H Woo: Nuclear?
No thanks.
@H Woo: Atomkraft? Nein danke.
If the climate change watchdog, friends of the earth, greenpeace, the green political parties of the world go and protest in China for 1 hour ill not only join up ill donate massively to their cause, they do not ever annoy the culprits of pollution, ireland is smog and pollution free basically these days our water ways are cleaner our homes are cleaner environmentally our waste is disposed off cleaner these days our petrol and diesel cars are cleaner than ever before and yet these campaigners want us taxed into starvation just to appease them, yet china is opening new coal fire plants weekly, leave us alone we have done more then most and contributed the least, GO AWAY, this kite flying was rejected by the electorate recently.
What’s the polution story with cremations? Just wondrin.
All demands to stop using fossil fules. But all the alternatives leave a carbon footprint, and they don’t even offset their own carbon footprint.
How long would a solid fuel have to be burning to create as. Much carbon as 1 plane flying to America
Just how long is it going to take for all to wake up on this one. We need and will need, data aside, vast amounts of 24/7/365 electric power. We could do a tiny amount of very expensive 12 hour storage of highly intermittent wind and solar, but there is only one system that actually fits the bill properly and that plain and simple is Nuclear. The Climate Change gang reckon this can all be got in via the Celtic interconnector from France, but the trouble is, their grid is linked to the German one and in order to get back into government a few years back, Merkel did a deal with the German Green Party, to close down the German nukes. Thus they certainly wont have any spare for here, with the massively expensive interonnecting “Great Wnite Whale” coming ashore in Youghal shortly.
Climate Change Advisory Council another NGO mostly handpicked by mophead financed by the taxpayer giving out non exoert advice designed to screw the taxpayer, 90% of that council are economists
The whole world needed to stop using fossil fuels 50+ years ago. Back in the 1970′s is when the transition should have started. But… big oil bribed politicians and started enormous disinformation campaigns aimed to mislead the public.
We don’t need to “in the next 15 years” we need to “as soon as can be managed”
Low and behold we saw cow’s on the news ……….. we saw cow’s. WTF have cow’s got to do with fossil fuels …….RTE are absolutely a propaganda machine against agriculture
There is no climate crisis. Of all the IPCC’s 33 climate impact drivers there are only 5 in which they have high confidence that they have already occurred in the historical period. See the first column of Table 12.12 in Chapter 12 AR6 page 1856. Three of these relate to temperature and one to CO2 (which of course we know). There is no discernible trend in extreme weather events in the last 20 years. The worst year for weather disasters in the last 25 years was 2005 when there were over 400 such disasters. The next is 2007 when there were about 390. The figures for the last four years are: 2020; 376, 2021; 385, 2022; 350 and 2023; 363. See EM-DAT.
In fact, on any metric, deaths, economic losses, number of events, the impact of climate is falling not rising.
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