ESRI says Ireland cannot meet onerous EU emissions target

ESRI says Ireland cannot meet onerous EU emissions target - The Irish Times - Thu, Jul 17, 2008

The committee's chairman, Seán Barrett of Fine Gael, said that the current climate change strategy should be scrapped by the Government and a new one published with ambitious, reachable targets for 2050.

In that context, both ESRI representatives talked about the difficulty of meeting the targets by 2020 in areas where there are slow turnarounds of capital. New housing insulation regulations will not have an appreciable effect until the decade after 2020; power plants are not replaced for decades and people hold on to cars for a decade and longer.

Prof Fitzgerald said that agriculture, which is responsible for 28 per cent of emissions mainly through methane produced by livestock, presented a problem.

"We are wrestling with it and do not have an answer on this. If we had to meet the target and it was an absolute imperative, the cheapest thing to do would be to get rid of all our livestock.

"But it would be a lunatic thing to do. It would do nothing for the world. They would just be bred in Brazil or elsewhere," he said.