Kyoto targets - Going green no longer a choice

The large growth in the Irish economy during the last eight years has led to a significant increase in consumption of raw materials and energy.

This country’s national greenhouse gas emissions currently exceed the Kyoto target by 23%, according to the official estimate of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Instead of decreasing, emissions went up by 17% in the 1997-2005 period. Various sectors contributed to the increases, but transport was by far the worst offender.

In 1997 transport had the fourth highest level of emissions, but it jumped to the second largest contributor in 2005, with an increase of 67%.

Agriculture has the country’s highest level of greenhouse gas emissions but those emissions remained essentially stationary during the period.

Even though housing stocks increased by 37 %, residential greenhouse gas emissions also remained stationary at 10 millions tons, suggesting that emissions per household declined, but this hides increased demand for energy.

Alternative energy sources, such as the use of bio-crops, could provide cleaner energy, especially in the transport sector.

Such alternative sources of energy has been largely ignored in this county, whereas Sweden, for example, has drawn up plans to wean itself off oil imports by 2020.

If we are serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions we need to decide without delay the kind of alternative steps that should be taken.