UN Climate Report: Ireland Must End Its Reliance On Big Energy. And Fast.
Back in 1988, when the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed, there were still significant information gaps in relation to what impact human activity was having on the Earth’s climate. Now, thirty-two years later, those information gaps have been filled and the reality of human-driven climate change has been confirmed beyond all doubt.
The IPCC published its sixth report last month. This 3,500 page document, based on the work of thousands of scientists, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive study of our planet’s climate and the impact that human activity is having on it.
It again confirms that the industrial scale production of ‘greenhouse gases’ is preventing heat in the Earth’s atmosphere from radiating into space in the way that it previously did. As a result the average global temperature is steadily rising and the planet’s delicately balanced climate is changing.
There are none as blind as those who refuse to see. Human-driven climate change is already driving an increased frequency and intensity of droughts and subsequent forest fires.
The short-term consequences of human-driven climate change are already happening and clear for all to see in the form of melting ice, rising sea levels, desertification, record-breaking temperatures and the increasing intensity and frequency of droughts, wildfires, flooding and other extreme weather events.
The IPCC report implores humanity to act decisively to dramatically reduce the global output of greenhouse gases immediately. A failure to act now will see climate change morph from a colossal, but surmountable, challenge into something much worse — an existential threat to entire regions of the planet and the billions of people that currently live in those regions.
The Irish political establishment on both sides of the border, with the notable exception of the DUP, have long since acknowledged the threat posed by climate change and the need for Ireland to dramatically reduce it’s emissions of Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide - the three gases which account for almost all of Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Like many other far-right parties, the DUP refuse to accept the scientific data that confirms the reality of human-drive climate change.
Despite repeated grandiose public commitments by successive Dublin governments, the Twenty-Six County state has been consistently rated as a laggard among the developed countries of the world when it comes to cutting greenhouse emissions.
The establishment political parties have failed to deliver on their climate change promises for the same reasons that they have failed to deliver on housing, healthcare, education and so many other areas of public life.
They have failed in all of these areas because they are unable or unwilling to face down powerful vested interests — because they have a blind ideological belief in private companies and ‘free market’ forces — because they lack any vision beyond the current electoral cycle — because they fundamentally do not believe that the Irish people can be world-leaders at anything.
The Moneypoint power station in Co Clare generates electricity by burning up to 7,000 tonnes of imported coal per day.
Roughly two-thirds of Irish greenhouse gas emissions are linked to the burning of fossil fuels in power stations, vehicles, homes, businesses and other settings. There can, therefore, be no dramatic reduction in our overall greenhouse emissions without dramatically reducing the Nation’s chronic over-reliance on fossil fuels.
When faced with this pressing need to move away from fossil fuels the Irish political establishment have done what they always do, by turning to the the private sector to solve the problem.
In this case the private sector is made up of ‘Big Energy’ - a relatively small number of giant privately-owned multinational corporations that scour the planet looking for ever cheaper ways to make ever greater profits.
Many of these corporations operate both fossil fuel and renewable energy divisions. A very profitable example of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds if ever there was one.
The folly of relying on Big Energy to deliver the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is perhaps best illustrated by looking at what has happened, or more accurately not happened, with Ireland’s fledgling off shore wind sector.
The Dublin government is entrusting Ireland’s energy future to Big Energy companies like the US-headquartered General Electric. In 2020 GE generated revenues of over $75,000,000,000 ($75bn) from a wide range of areas including both fossil fuel and renewable energy divisions.
It’s now more than twenty years since the Dublin government gave Big Energy the go ahead to build large offshore windfarms off the Irish coast - windfarms with the potential to power millions of homes, schools, hospitals, vehicles and businesses not only in Ireland but also in Britain and mainland Europe.
But in over two decades Big Energy, in the form of GE Electric, has only delivered a single seven-turbine test project off the coast of Arklow. And that was seventeen years ago. None of the other several dozen offshore windfarms that Big Energy have promised have yet been delivered.
The failure to tap into Ireland’s vast offshore wind potential hasn’t occurred because the technology doesn’t exist as there are already over 160 operational windfarms across the globe.
It has happened because the Dublin government has allowed Big Energy to determine when and where offshore windfarms are developed. And Big Energy hasn’t been inclined to push ahead with Irish offshore windfarms because they were able to make greater profits by investing their funds elsewhere.
Throughout the more than two decades that Big Energy has failed to deliver large offshore wind, Ireland has continued to burn vast quantities of oil, petrol, gas, coal and peat.
Two pillars of the political establishment, Leo Varadkar and Richard Bruton, arrive for the launch of the 2019 Climate Action Plan - a plan which relies Big Energy to deliver a low-carbon economy.
In all of this, Big Energy is not at fault. These companies are just doing what profit-driven companies do in the capitalist world. Instead the fault lies with the Irish political establishment and the Irish political establishment alone.
It is the Irish political establishment which has abdicated its responsibility to directly deliver the transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. It is they have have chosen to put the private sector in effective control of not only offshore wind, but also onshore wind, solar and all other areas of renewable energy production.
And beyond energy production, on the other side of the energy equation, the establishment is relying on private companies to deliver dramatic changes in energy consumption - in transport, in heating, in lighting, in cooking, in industry and many other areas of everyday life.
This chronic over-reliance on Big Energy and the wider private sector has failed to deliver the necessary reduction in fossil fuel use and left the Twenty-Six Counties lagging behind many European states in the race to achieve a low-carbon society.
This failure is made all the more galling when one considers the vast potential that Ireland’s geography offers for offshore and onshore wind energy generation - advantages that could make Ireland a net exporter of energy for the first time in history.
In contrast to the failed approach of the political establishment, Éirígí believes the state must take direct responsibility for delivering the energy revolution that is needed to drive down Ireland’s greenhouse emissions.
The recent UN climate report confirms the scale of the threat facing our planet. The days of waiting decades for private companies and market forces to deliver an Irish energy revolution have passed. Now is the time for the state, acting in the interests of the Nation, to act with decision, scale and speed.
Nature did not gift Ireland with large quantities of easily recoverable coal, gas or oil. Since the time of the industrial revolution we have been almost entirely reliant on imported fossil fuels - a dependency which has left the country extremely vulnerable to external shocks.
But nature did gift Ireland with a vast abundance of other natural resources in the form of our seas and winds - natural resources which could allow Ireland to become not only energy independent but also an energy exporter in the age of renewable energy.
Éirígí asserts that these natural resources belong to us all collectively and that they should be used for the collective good of the Nation. Existing publicly-controlled companies, including the ESB and Bord na Mona, are well positioned to develop large scale offshore and onshore wind farms.
These companies, or new ones as required, should also be used to develop Irish solar farms and to invest in the emergent technologies that aim to turn wave and tidal energy into electricity.
This is Éirígí’s vision for the future - an Ireland powered by renewable energy that is held in public ownership and used for the public good - an Ireland where citizens and businesses are provided with cheap green energy to help them make the transition away from fossil fuels.
You can find out more about our vision for a green future on our Power To The People campaign page. And if you’re ready to join the fight for energy justice and a New Republic you can do so here.