Green plan too good to be true

WITH Taoiseach Bertie Ahern likely to go to the country in May, there was a strong whiff of electioneering in the air as the White Paper on Energy was launched yesterday in a sunburst of green politics from the Government.

Astonishingly, considering how sluggish the Coalition has been on environmental matters, the document goes way beyond EU targets for renewable energy.

Against a backdrop of rising oil prices and growing demand for environmental action, it surpasses by an Irish mile, the Brussels objective of harnessing 20% of Europe’s energy from renewable sources by 2020, the Coalition has come up with an even more ambitious target of 33% of generating Ireland’s energy use from renewables by then.