Ireland's woeful climate output

Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions surged late last year, while falling across the EU. The Irish govt claimed the figure was distorted by multinationals based in Ireland. But we dug into it with Eurostat. Two very real factors made Ireland an outlier... https://irishtimes.com/business/2023/05/17/air-travel-not-economic-growth-boosted-irish-emissions-late-last-year-eurostat-says/

One: almost all of Ireland's rise in greenhouse gas emissions was caused by one thing: air travel. The post-Covid rebound in flying accounted for 75% of Ireland's 2 million tonne increase in emissions.

Flights, obviously, take place internationally. The greenhouse gas emissions captured in Ireland's figures are the emissions of air travel companies that are registered in Ireland, reporting revenue to Ireland. The activities of Irish companies do not stop at Ireland's borders.

Factor number two: Why did emissions fall in the rest of the EU? Because they slashed their use of gas, in response to the energy crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Overall in the EU, emissions fell most in manufacturing, households, and electricity and gas supply.

The EU countries agreed to cut gas use 15%. This was to avoid shortages and reduce prices, because due to the design of the electricity market, using gas pushes up the price of all energy sources. They actually overshot this, reducing use overall by 17.7% from Aug 22-March 23.

How much did Ireland reduce its gas use? We didn't really. It fell 0.2%. Finland reduced theirs by -55.7%.

Ireland successfully argued for an opt-out from a mandatory reduction in gas use, which was agreed among the others to kick in in an emergency. This was on the basis that we aren't connected to the EU grid, so it wouldn't make a difference what we did.

Nevertheless, the Irish government said we would voluntarily try to reduce gas use by 15%. But we didn't do that. I'm not sure many people in Ireland knew it was a target.

So are our very high greenhouse gas emissions just a factor of Ireland's strange GDP figures, which are real Irish economic activity when the government wants it to be, but not really Irish economic activity when the government doesn't want it to be? No.

Eurostat notes: "Of the 23 EU countries that saw a decrease in emissions, only 5 recorded a decrease in their GDP (Estonia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Finland, and Sweden), meaning most managed to decrease emissions while growing their GDP."