Letter to Editor: What’s up with climate (in)action plan?
With great fanfare, the Government unveiled its climate action plan (strategy up to 2050) for Ireland in June. Over 60 days have passed since. This plan was unveiled with the intention of holding “town hall-type”
open public meetings, to explain the plan and to take questions thus getting some feedback.
After my long investigation to find the venue of the first (of six?) such meeting(s), I went along to the supposed venue (UCC) with the intention of asking two questions.
1: With a plan to phase out carbon fired electricity generation by 2050, and to have around one million electric vehicles (EVs) on Irish roads by 2030, together with prohibiting household oil fired central heating for all future builds, where does the Government expect the three or four-fold increase in peak electicity demand on the Irish National Grid to come from (ie, 5,000 mws for EV charging, 10,000 mws for household heat pumps, on top of 5,000 or so megawatt peak grid demand recorded on these days), essentially when there is *no wind blowing?
[*Note: The ~13 GWe mentioned as ‘renewable energy’ in the CA plan does not add up to expected demand, in this respect, if the economy continues to improve.]
2: Has the Government involved Eirgrid when preparing their plan, and if so, why is there no reference to Eirgrid’s involvement?
Unfortunately, try as I may, I was unable to obtain the microphone, to put my questions to Ministers Bruton and Coveney. I managed to present a document to the ministers, but neither has responded.
Almost two calendar months have passed since the first climate action town hall meeting but there does not seem to have been any further press releases about the plan, or of any future such meetings taking place since then (June 21). Why?
Midleton
Co Cork
