If we are to be honest with ourselves, it really didn’t come as much of a shock to hear last week that we are going to miss the national target for cutting greenhouse gases by a country mile. The Environmental Protection Agency’s current best-case scenario is that emissions will be cut by 29 per cent come 2030, rather than the legally binding target of 51 per cent.
It was an absurdly optimistic target and the “additional measures” which Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan hopes will close the gap stray into the realm of magical thinking.
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The measures in question are set out in the revised national energy and climate plan (NECP). The flagship item is the development of 200 anaerobic digesters which will produce biomethane from grass, slurry and food waste. There will also be a “pivot” from road freight to rail freight, with new rail lines being built and old ones reopened. Carbon capture and storage combined with a ramp up of renewable energy, including offshore wind, will make up the balance, Ryan believes.
Is it really conceivable 200 communities across Ireland are going to willingly acquiesce to the construction of industrial plants making LPG out of cow manure in their area?
If you want some indication of just how fantastical these ideas are, you do not have to look much further than the offshore wind part of the plan, which envisages the sector generating 20 gigawatts of electricity by 2040; more than double current power demand.
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Take just one project: the plan to build a wind farm near the Sceirde Rocks off the southern coast of Connemara. Australian investment bank Macquarie is behind the €1.5 billion project, which is being funded by a Canadian teachers’ pension fund. They want to put 30 turbines in the vicinity of the rocks which are about 5km off the coast. They will be 325m high. It should produce enough green electricity to power 350,000 homes. That could make a quite a dent in the target for renewable energy.
The project is one of four selected by EirGrid last year that will be connected to the national grid and thus able to sell their power. As such, it is a flagship for the offshore wind sector. Its operator, Corio Generation, hopes to submit a planning application this year.
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The wind farm would seem to have support from some elements of the local community which stands to benefit from a €70 million community fund. The project will also use a new deep-water pier being constructed at Ros an Mhíl in Connemara by Údarás na Gaeltachta. Ros an Mhíl is just one of several ports around the coast that have been identified as potential hubs for servicing offshore wind farms which could help offset years of economic decline in their hinterland.
Two weeks ago, work on the new pier came to a sudden halt after a successful challenge by environmental campaigners. They argued that the extension to the planning permission for the new pier granted by Galway County Council was flawed.
The council did not contest the case and will no doubt find a way around the problem. But for the time being the new pier is dead in the water. A project that would make a tangible contribution to Ireland meeting its climate change targets has been stymied by well-organised and resourced environmental activists.
When it was pointed out to Peter Sweetmen of Wild Ireland Defence – the limited liability company that took the challenge – that the project was important to the development of wind energy he replied: “It’s not our problem.”
[New south coast wind farms to be concentrated initially off Waterford and Wexford]
“Renewable energy has to comply with the law. It is not exempt from the law,” he told The Irish Independent, adding that the 75 per cent of the pier which has already been completed may have to be removed. If and when the council finds a way around the current impasse, that is not the end of the windfarm’s promoters’ problems.
If we are to be honest with ourselves, it really didn’t come as much of a shock to hear last week we are going to miss the national target for cutting greenhouse gases by a country mile
Local residents – and one suspects some not-so-local residents with holiday homes in the vicinity – have organised a petition to “highlight” concern about possible “impacts on sites of historical and scientific importance, tourism and fishing which sustain local communities”. It is presumably a precursor to a challenge to the planning application. Among the issues raised is the possibility that a weather station on Mace Head will have to be moved as the turbines will affect its measurements. The station recorded the cleanest air in Europe last year its supporters point out; as if that is reason enough for leaving it where it is and moving a €1.5 billion project.
Once again the bigger picture seems to have got lost somewhere. Preserving a weather station – all the better to record the impact of global warming – over a project that will cut emissions is beyond shortsighted.
[Clare wind farm proposal faces widespread opposition]
When you extrapolate the consequences of this sort of myopic nimbyism across the range of additional measures announced by Ryan last week, it is hard not to be sceptical. Is it really conceivable that 200 communities across Ireland are going to willingly acquiesce to the construction of industrial plants making LPG out of cow manure in their area? Likewise, the various communities that will be affected by the infrastructure needed for the pivot to rail freight and large-scale carbon capture? Are they going to play the environmental card and employ any other tactic they can think of to get it built somewhere else? The answer is yes. Will they find willing helpers among environmental activists? No doubt.
