Seeking singular political consensus on climate change

ALL POLITICAL parties in this country will have to come to an immediate consensus on climate change and alternative energies if we are to protect future generations, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources told a conference yesterday.

Eamon Ryan described the challenge of climate change as being as “mammoth” a task as that which faced the Republic’s revolutionary leaders as they began building the State.

“Every man, woman and child in this country uses the equivalent of five pints of oil a day. The challenge is how do we de-carbonise our society. This is the big task before us as we try to protect our people, society and economy,” he said.

Ireland, he said, should aim to be oil-free by 2050.

Mr Ryan was speaking at the second day of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas Annual International Conference at Cork City Hall.

After two days of speakers lamenting the failure of governments to admit the impending oil crisis and the urgency of climate change, Mr Ryan said Ireland is a high-risk economy and society with 90% of our energy coming from fossil fuels.

By 2020, the minister said, the country is aiming to have 33% of our energy needs from renewable resources. Renewable energy currently accounts for just 10%.

“We need singular political consensus on climate change and alternative energy similar to that required to turn around the economy and create the Celtic Tiger,” he said.

Airtricity chief executive Eddie O’Connor called for government and local authority support for wind energy saying it would create secure energy supply, a competitive advantage for this country, an electricity export market and allow us to meet alternative energy targets.

He called for government support for his company to build a European offshore supergrid which would provide electricity for much of Europe.

“If we want to reduce our carbon emissions by 3% by 2020, we must support wind energy in this country,” he said.

He called for the government and local authorities to get behind the idea as it would take 10 years to get off the ground.

British Labour MP Michael Meacher also backed the wind energy argument saying he foresaw societies reducing their dependence on oil by first moving to gas and then renewables. He said that Ireland and Britain had a bigger capacity to produce wind energy than all of Europe.