The Government has today launched Climate Action Plan 2023, setting out how Ireland will accelerate the action required to respond to the climate crisis, putting climate solutions at the centre of Ireland’s social and economic development.
The Plan includes actions that will transform and improve life in Ireland. Measures include the following:
- Enough renewable electricity to power every home and business in the country by 2030.
- 70% of people in rural Ireland to have buses that go three times a day to the nearest town.
- 500,000 homes retrofitted to BER B2 to make them warmer.
- 1 in 3 private cars on our roads to be electric by 2030.
- Walking, cycling and public transport to account for 50% of all daily trips.
- Tillage farming to cover up to 400,000 hectares by 2030.
Our climate is changing, its impacts are becoming increasingly severe and are having a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable. Though we have made much progress in laying the foundations to achieve our climate goals, we must do more and we must act much faster.
Climate Action Plan 2023 builds on the previous climate action plans and is the framework through which the Government intends to meet the legally-binding, economy-wide carbon budgets and sectoral ceilings agreed in July 2022, and the emissions reductions targets set out in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Acts. These targets are a key pillar of the Programme for Government.
Citizen engagement is at the centre of the Climate Action Plan 2023. Through our Climate Conversations 2022 we captured the views of over 4,300 people in public consultation, and engaged people from diverse backgrounds in rich discussions on climate action through a series of workshops and focus groups across the country.
The plan comes at a time when emissions in Ireland are still increasing. In response, the updated Climate Action Plan focuses on how we can achieve the required system change across society and the economy to reverse these trends. The Government recognises that we must first transform the systems that shape:
- how and where we live,
- how we work,
- how we get around
- and how we produce food.
This in turn will make it easier for people to make more sustainable choices
Delivering on the targets will mean:
- a rapid scaling up of our transition to renewables;
- a dramatic change to our transport system and how we allocate our road space;
- ambitious home and business retrofitting and climate-based construction;
- and innovative systems that will protect and support our family farms to diversify their income streams.
The plan acknowledges that many of the actions outlined will be challenging — but the benefits will include warmer homes, cheaper electricity, better transport, vibrant and resilient communities, biodiversity-rich landscapes, improved health, new jobs and a thriving, green economy for current and future generations.
Speaking at today’s launch of the Climate Action Plan 2023, the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar TD, said:
“We find ourselves at a moment of real opportunity for our country, and for the planet. Climate change is the most pressing long term global challenge of our time and Ireland is facing up to that challenge. We should not see climate action as an obligation or a burden. We should embrace it as an opportunity. It's about warmer homes, cleaner air, fewer journeys, less time commuting, more remote and home working, more jobs and regional development.
“We should be the generation that turns the tide on climate change and biodiversity loss, and leaves the planet to the next generation in a better condition than we inherited it. Within a generation, Ireland can become energy independent by harnessing our untapped renewable energy resources. We can reap the rewards for our people that come with it - greater energy security, stable prices, new industries producing green fertilisers and green hydrogen, more jobs and regional development.”
The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin TD, said:
“The invasion of Ukraine has only underlined the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, a central objective of the Climate Action Plan. Ireland must be at the vanguard of the noticeable step-up in climate ambition that is underway across the EU.
“The Government will continue to provide strong leadership through this ambitious Plan. Ministers now have legal responsibility to ensure that each sector is equipped and supported to achieve the emissions reductions demanded of them. Achieving our objectives on climate change is a national endeavour that will require a positive, sustained engagement from people across all communities. Government will play its full part but no sector is, or can be, unaffected by this shared, all-encompassing transition that we have embarked upon.”
The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and Transport, Eamon Ryan TD, said:
“The biggest challenge we face over the coming decade is what we do collectively as a country to tackle climate change and provide for a better environment for our children and grandchildren.
“We have written into law one of the strongest climate laws in the world, and the Programme for Government is the greenest ever seen. But this is not enough. We are facing three ecological crises: climate, biodiversity loss and pollution. There must be a dramatic shift. We must change.
“But we can and will be good at this. Our potential to be climate leaders is huge; and now we need to ramp up our ambition. Global emissions have continued to increase, as they have here in Ireland, so the scale of change needed to reduce them is unprecedented. To stay ahead of the climate curve, we must implement our plans urgently.
“The Climate Act 2021 and Climate Action Plan 2023 leave little room for manoeuvre. It is the responsibility of Ministers, key economic sectors and industries to demonstrate that they are on a clear path to halve our emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050. Our approach is based on the principle of fairness, ensuring a just transition where costs and benefits are shared equitably.”
ENDS
NOTES TO THE EDITOR
It is intended that an Annex to the Climate Action Plan, outlining more detail on the Plan’s actions, will be published early in 2023.
Required emissions reductions by 2030 for the six vital, high-impact sectors:
- 75% in the electricity sector;
- 45% for commercial/public buildings and a 40% reduction or residential buildings;
- 50% in the transport sector;
- 35% in industry;
- 25% in agriculture;
- accelerating measures and actions to use our land more effectively to capture and store carbon.
Powering renewables and decarbonising our electricity system (75% reduction):
To reach a 75% reduction in the electricity sector, we will facilitate a large-scale deployment of renewables, as well as enabling the electrification of other technologies. This will include:
- an acceleration of the delivery of onshore wind to 9GW*, solar to 8GW, and offshore wind to at least 5GW.
- a new, dynamic Green Electricity Tariff by 2025 to incentivise people to use lower-cost, renewable electricity at times of high wind and solar generation.
- supporting at least 500MW of local, community-based renewable energy projects and increased levels of new micro-generation and small-scale generation.
- phasing out the use of coal and peat in electricity generation.
* 1 GW = a gigawatt (1 billion watts), which is typically enough to power 600,000 homes.
Building better — reducing emissions in our ‘built environment’ (45% reduction in the commercial/public sector; 40% reduction in the residential sector):
We will increase the energy efficiency of existing buildings by expanding our retrofitting programme, and put in place policies to deliver zero-emissions new builds. Key targets include:
- designing and constructing all new dwellings to Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) standard by 2025, and Zero Emission Building (ZEB) standard by 2030.
- retrofitting the equivalent of 120,000 dwellings to BER B2 by 2025, and 500,000 dwellings by 2030.
- installing up to 0.8TWh** of district heating capacity by 2025, and up to 2.7TWh by 2030 – enough to meet 10% of energy demand.
- installing heat pumps in 45,000 existing dwellings and in 170,000 new dwellings by 2025, increasing to 400,000 and 280,000 respectively by 2030.
** 1 TWh = a terawatt hour (1 trillion watt hours).
Turning transport around — embracing a ‘modal shift’ (50% reduction):
To achieve a 50% reduction in transport emissions, we will implement policies to improve town, city and rural planning, improving public transport and active travel programmes, while supporting the switch to biofuels and EVs. This will happen by:
- reallocating road space for better and more frequent public transport and active travel – i.e. 300 EV buses and 125,000 more sustainable journeys by 2025, and 1,500 EV buses by 2030.
- reducing the total distance driven across all car journeys by 20%.
- walking, cycling and public transport to account for 50% of all journeys.
- ensuring that nearly one in three private cars will be an electric vehicle by 2030.
- 70% of people in rural Ireland will have buses that go three times a day to the nearest town.
Making family farms more viable — and future-proofing our agricultural sector (25% reduction):
We will put in place innovative supports to ensure that Irish family farm incomes can diversify and become more sustainable. We will do this by:
- significantly reducing our use of chemical nitrogen as a fertilizer to a maximum of 300,000 tonnes.
- increasing organic farming to 450,000 hectares.
- reducing methane emissions from livestock through a variety of measures, for example through earlier finishing of beef cattle, improved animal breeding and improved animal feeding.
- supporting livestock farmers’ transition to alternative land uses through the provision of diversification options, including increased organic farming, forestry and tillage and expanded biomethane targets.
- expanding the indigenous biomethane sector through anaerobic digestion, reaching up to 5.7TWh of biomethane from 150–200 anaerobic digestion plants.
Greening industry (35% reduction):
To reach a 35% reduction in emissions in enterprise and industry, we must change how we produce, consume, and design our goods and services by breaking the link between fossil fuels and economic progress. This will be achieved by:
- increasing the share of carbon-neutral heating to a minimum of 70% by 2030.
- growing the circular economy and bioeconomy.
- reducing clinker content in cement and substituting new products for construction materials, ensuring at least a 30% reduction of embodied carbon in construction materials produced and used in Ireland.
Transforming our land use:
Ireland’s Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector is currently a net source of emissions. To achieve emissions reductions for this sector*** and use our land more effectively to capture and store carbon we will:
- increase our annual afforestation rates to 8,000 hectares per annum from 2023 onwards.
- improve carbon sequestration of 450,000 hectares of grasslands on mineral soils, and reduce the management intensity of grasslands on 80,000 hectares of drained organic soils by 2030.
- rehabilitate 77,600 hectares of peatlands.
*** The sectoral emissions ceiling for LULUCF will be settled by the end of 2023 in parallel with the Land-use Review.
The Climate Action Plan 2023 is available to view and or download here. Also at this link you will also find a user-friendly summary document of the plan.
Climate Conversations 2022:
The insights and calls to action received in the Climate Conversations 2022 are reflected in the Climate Action Plan 2023 and presented in the accompanying Climate Conversations 2022 Summary Report, available here.