THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION has closed infringement proceedings against Ireland over the government being years-late in submitting its long-term climate strategy.
The proceedings have been closed 15 months after they were first issued in 2022 as the government finally sent a version of the strategy to Europe.
Despite missing an EU deadline by several years, the document does not reflect much of Ireland’s existing climate legislation and is set to be re-submitted as an updated version in the coming months.
The Department of Environment (DECC) expects to send an updated version in the coming months, which will be the first edition of the strategy to be prepared in line with the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Acts from 2015 to 2021, The Journal has learned. It will also take into account the 2024 Climate Action Plan.
It comes four years after the original deadline for EU member states to submit the plans passed on 1 January 2020.
In 2018, a European Union Regulation set out that member states should develop 30-year strategies laying down how they plan to tackle the climate crisis to help fulfil EU requirements under the crucial Paris Agreement. Member states were given 13 months to compile their strategies and submit them by the start of 2020.
The government’s explanation for Ireland’s delayed submission is that a draft had been prepared in 2019 but that increased climate ambition in the new Programme for Government meant it needed to revise the strategy.
The Programme for Government was agreed only in June 2020, months after the climate strategy was supposed to be sent to Europe.
The government and DECC have attributed the delay since then to various other factors that have arisen, like the 2021 Climate Act, that needed to be addressed in the strategy.
Communication from the government and successive Climate Actions Plans promised various timelines for the completion of the strategy, but they were repeatedly missed.
In September 2022, the EU Commission sent letters of formal notice to Ireland, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania – the only four countries left at that time that had still to submit their strategy.
Finally, in April 2023, Cabinet approved what DECC had described as an “updated draft Long-Term Strategy”.
A spokesperson for DECC has confirmed that that version of the strategy was submitted to the Commission the following month in May 2023.
“However, to meet additional requirements established by our Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Acts 2015 to 2021, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications launched a further consultation in 2023 on the Strategy that was already submitted to the European Commission,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Journal.
“Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan also consulted further with Government ministers and the Climate Change Advisory Council in 2023,” they said.
“As such an update to the Strategy is being prepared, to be completed in Quarter 1 of this year.
“While the updated strategy is a nationally determined obligation under our legislation, as it will conform to both EU and national requirements, for consistency, the updated Strategy will also be submitted to the EU Commission and UNFCCC to replace the Strategy submitted in 2023.
“The updated Strategy will be the first national long-term climate strategy to be prepared in line with the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Acts 2015 to 2021 and will take into account the latest Climate Action Plan 2024.”
The EU Commission closed its infringement proceedings against Ireland in December.
In cases where a member state put on notice continues not to comply with its obligations under EU law, or fails to communicate how it is implementing an EU directive, the Commission has the power to refer the matter to the Court of Justice and to ask the Court to impose penalties.
The 90-page version of Ireland’s strategy published last April outlines some steps for how the electricity, industry, built environment, transport and agriculture, forestry & land use sectors can cut their emissions over the next several decades up to 2050, by which time Ireland aims to have reached net-zero emissions.
Speaking to The Journal’s climate newsletter Temperature Check at the time, Campaigns Coordinator at the Stop Climate Chaos coalition and researcher Sadhbh O’Neill said she was disappointed with the strategy.
“My overall reaction is that the government is very much relying on technological solutions across the board,” she said.
“In some cases, these technologies exist – say in the case of renewable wind and solar power and renewable electricity and the electrification of heating and transport – but in other cases, the technologies that they’re leaning on as a way of getting to net-zero emissions well before 2050 don’t even exist yet.”
Measures on the table for the agriculture sector, for instance, were “radically insufficient”, O’Neill said.
Climate policy expert @SadhbhO spoke to @laurenanna_1 for the latest edition of our Temperature Check newsletter, sharing her take on Ireland’s recently published climate strategy.
— TheJournal.ie (@thejournal_ie) May 5, 2023
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The European Commission has outlined that “stable long-term strategies are crucial to help achieve the economic transformation needed and broader sustainable development goals”.
The world is already experiencing devastating impacts of climate change.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service has confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year of modern temperature records, which date back to 1850, replacing 2016 as the previous record-holder.
Additionally, the service’s deputy head Samantha Burgess said that “temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years”.
Written weather records are available back to around 1850, but scientists can understand how the earth’s climate functioned before then through information taken from sources like tree rings, ice cores and sediments.
“Not only is 2023 the warmest year on record, it is also the first year with all days over 1C warmer than the pre-industrial period,” Burgess said.
Extreme events around the world in 2023 had significant impacts on human health, ecosystems, nature and infrastructure, the Copernicus report said, with “exceptional” instances of flooding, wildfires, drought and extreme heat.
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