Few would deny that most of the rhetoric on climate commitments has changed significantly in the European Union. What were once hard and fast languages on the unavoidable cuts required have slowly been chipped away. It has, most recently, been laid bare in the run-up to the European elections both from influential voices in the centre right, European People’s Party, EPP, and not least from the EPP member and commission president, Ursula von der Leydon, around climate.
Ultimately, this approach played out in the European elections when the centre-right European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) picked up 14 seats while in contrast the Greens/EFA group lost 20 seats
Earlier this year farmers’ protests captured much of the headlines not least for their antics around fires and heavy machinery, but behind the scenes powerful interests were cutting away at the Green Deal.
It ensured that massive economic players—the EU’s auto manufacturers, despite all their public committed vocals to the EV transition—made sure to modify the EU’s announced ban on combustion engines by allowing e-fuels.
Deplored by environmental activists and, importantly, many scientific experts who state it is just a smokescreen for continued fossil fuel burning.
This is out of fear that e-fuels would most likely be manufactured using national grids despite claims that they will solely be produced via renewable energy.
Meanwhile, these same car manufacturers have managed to get the EU to try and limit access to cheaper Chinese-made EVs because their lower prices hurt the inevitable transition to electric transport.
Similarly, the aviation industry seems all but sacrosanct in that while carbon taxes on home heating kerosene continue to rise, the virtually identical kerosene burned in planes remains untaxed.
Any moves to introduce such a measure as fair taxation have been vociferously resisted by powerful lobbies underwritten by gigantic airlines, not least Ireland’s own Ryanair.
Perhaps that is why despite positive noises the official position of the Irish government for finally ending these tax exemptions and including them in the EU’s ETS trading system has not appeared.
Meanwhile, with a Green party government coalition partner in place, the EPA has warned that all sectors are off track for a legally binding target for the 2030s in Ireland.
It would be easy to fault this upon the Green Party, as at the root of their election promises was this exact thing, but that truly is a lazy assessment.
The problems instead reside in having failed to address the balance between economic growth and GHG production.
Climate challenge
Continued connection s of energy hungry data centres at a time when we still are not harnessing the wind potential off our west cost inevitability creates failures to meet electricity GHG reductions.
The more motorway and bypass building in contrast to an investment further in buses and rail is blowing away GHG savings through increased electric cars as it inevitably increased GHG from combustion engines.
While many small towns and rural areas have benefited from increased Local Link supports, living on the commuter belt, this is a decided improvement but of limited impact.
Indeed Irish transport emissions are some of the fastest rising across the EU post covid lockdowns.
Underperformance is stark. EPA projections put transport emissions reductions, even in the best case scenario, at exceeding their 2030 ceiling by 2.7 million tonnes CO2eq or 45% higher than they should.
Meanwhile agriculture is far closer, on track to overshoot by 10%, though this scenario doesn’t include reductions via early slaughter and other policy measures the EPA says they need to see more evidence for.
In fact, transport, despite starting from a lower base, will overshoot their emissions ceiling by more than agriculture. Agriculture
What all that means to agriculture remains to be seen, particularly in 2025.
It has been forgotten by many that the setting of targets was accompanied by provisions for reviewing how each sector is to stay on or off track toward meeting 2030 targets. Therefore, that means revising the ceiling to allow overemissions by fossil fuel-intensive transport could be on the cards due to further cuts in agriculture.
It is the extreme end of the political spectrum that will tell farmers we can just scrap these targets altogether. In fact, there is a very substantial legal underpinning for these targets at national and EU level.
Such promises would only lead to damnation for farming – as instead of government policy where farming organisations still have a say – the battle would move to courtrooms where they have little to no experience while environmental activists have far more.
It would be in farmers’ best interests to have as rapid a fossil fuel transition as possible, to give farmers headroom to meet their own targets without the burden of emissions from other sectors.