THE GOVERNMENT INTENDS to formally consider the use of carbon capture and storage practices to help reduce Ireland’s emissions under the new Climate Action Plan.
The Climate Action Plan 2024, which was approved by Cabinet today, outlines how the State intends to close the gap left in previous plans between sectors’ emissions reductions targets and the overall national goal.
The plan still needs to go through a public consultation and a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in the new year, with the final version to be published next spring.
Most sectors were assigned specific emissions targets last year but were warned that the figures were subject to change as 26 megatonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent (MtCO2eq) had been left unallocated — a move that was criticised by climate activists who said the government urgently needed to clarify how it planned to make those reductions.
The 2024 plan has finally indicated how those unallocated savings may be dealt with, including through carbon capture and storage.
Carbon capture and storage is the practice of capturing emissions created through industrial processes and storing them in the ground to prevent them from clogging up the atmosphere, but the technology is still expensive and not widely in use.
“It’s in the hard-to-reach sectors, like cement plants and incinerators, where you can scrub the carbon from the chimney and store it geologically,” Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan said today, speaking to reporters. “It’s a new, additional measure we’re looking at.”
The plan calls for a “Carbon Capture and Removals Working Group” to be established, with the group’s members and terms of reference to be confirmed by the end of the second quarter of the year.
Working groups to address the unallocated emissions reductions will also be set up on energy efficiency and demand; future energy systems; and sustainable food and agriculture.
The government has been given stark warnings over the last year from agencies like the Climate Change Advisory Council, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland that the country is way off track on staying within legally-binding carbon budgets.
Many parts of the world are already facing devastating impacts of climate change. If global average temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees, the world “faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards” in the next 20 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Exceeding a 1.5 degree rise, even temporarily, would lead to “additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible”.
The Climate Action Plan 2024 outlines that the “world’s climate is changing rapidly, with temperatures increasing faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2,000 years”.
“While the benefits of transitioning to a low carbon economy are increasingly being recognised, action to reduce emissions must be significantly accelerated in the period to 2030,” the plan states.
In agriculture, a national framework is to be published on carbon farming, which is a way of farming that keeps carbon in the soil rather than it being emitted into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Legislation will be developed for a Heat Bill that will include district heating, a low-emissions way of delivering heat to buildings.
Data centres, which consume massive amounts of energy, will be offered new incentives to be more flexible in when they demand energy.
Measures in the transport sector include setting up a working group on alternative fuels, improving rail connections to ports and ‘Rail and Sail’ passenger tickets, and speeding up the implementation of public transport projects.
The land use, land-use change and forestry sector was the only sector in 2022 not to be given a specific emissions ceiling, pending a review of options for the sector after the EPA that year gave a new baseline figure for the sector’s emissions.
The 2018 baseline emissions for LULUCF have been refined each year since the carbon budgets were set, the plan says, attributing this to “an improved understanding of the emission factors for forestry on peat soils”.
Those changes add “uncertainty” to the exact figures for the sector, the plan suggests. As a result, it intends to measure progress through “activity targets” rather than one overall reduction goal.
Measures to reduce emissions from the land use sector under the plan include rehabilitating peatlands, planting trees, increased use of harvested wood products, and facilitating the natural process of soil sequestering (storing) carbon.
Minister Ryan said today that he believes the country’s emissions have “peaked” and will only decline in future rather than increase.
“Coal use is down 50% in power generation, our oil use is down 80%, and solar for the first time ever has gone from 20 million units of solar energy to 400 million units this year,” he told reporters.
“We have peaked several years ago. Back in the day when Moneypoint was our main power generation, you didn’t have any of these alternative technologies,” he said.
“We have already peaked and we now need to descend like a downhill skier.”
Friends of the Earth chief executive Oisin Coghlan criticised the government’s timing for the plan’s publication, saying it should be released at a time that allows for more scrutiny.
“Publishing such an important and complex document without fanfare just days before Christmas is really unsatisfactory,” Coghlan said.
“It should be a moment for national conversation about how we are going to reduce emissions fast enough to prevent climate breakdown and how we are going to do it fairly enough to leave no one behind,” he said, adding: “That’s just not possible this week with the Dáil in recess and the public understandably in holiday mode.”
We all know that Irish emissions are not yet reducing in line with the legally binding limits adopted by the Dáil. If this updated plan does contain new measures bold enough to close that emissions gap the Government has them well hidden in the small print.
“A plan that really met the moment would be one that where the new actions were so innovative and disruptive that they caused a real public stir, most likely irritation and inspiration in equal measure,” he said.
“I worry that with an electoral cycle approaching the three coalition leaders are shying away from the political courage climate action needs.”
He said the “litmus test” will be “is it bold enough and specific enough for the EPA to be able to conclude that it can bring our emissions in line with the legal limits on climate pollution to the end of 2025 and 2030″.
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