Matt Shanahan Challenges Climate Plan and Data Centre Strategy
Matt Shanahan addressed the Climate Action Plan, welcoming stepped-up governance but warning against competitive damage and gaps in implementation. He pressed for clarity on offshore wind infrastructure, the designation of a new wind-energy port and how renewable electricity will be used, especially by data centres.
Overview of the speech
Matt Shanahan outlined key aims of the Climate Action Plan - halving net carbon emissions by 2030 and getting to a net-zero carbon economy by 2050 - and said governance measures and five-year carbon budgets are to be welcomed. He stressed that Ireland must not act as an outlier and risk competitive harm if other countries do not follow suit.
Offshore wind and port proposal
He discussed planned increases in renewable electricity, including offshore wind development on the east and southeast coasts and floating technology for the west. He argued the designated wind-energy port should be Roslair harbour, citing deep water, location advantages and the potential to address long-standing regional infrastructure imbalance.
Data centres and electricity demand
Shanahan questioned assumptions that much new wind capacity would serve data centres, noting media reports of over 75 MOUs and regulator speculation that data centres could consume up to 70% of future electricity. He said the numbers do not add up and has written to the minister seeking details on MOUs and private-sector engagements, with no reply received to date.
Community generation, retrofitting and transport
He called for clearer micro-generation schemes so private producers can feed electricity into the grid and for legislative detail on community ownership of wind projects. He welcomed ambitions on retrofitting housing and accelerating electric vehicles to 2030 but said taxation and incentives must change to make EVs economically viable for many households.
Forestry and land sinks
Shanahan flagged increases in afforestation and bog rewetting as carbon-sink measures but raised concerns about the forestry sector's current state and the number of outstanding applications, saying the sector is in disarray and needs attention.
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Minister, the Climate Action Plan, a monstrous piece of legislation for a monstrous problem and there are certain key goals which are well known at this stage reducing our net carbon emissions by half by 2030 and trying to get to a net zero carbon economy by 2050 and I suppose the plan outlines Ireland's current greenhouse gas emissions and targets them across a range of all our major sectors electricity enterprise built environment transport agriculture and the list goes on in fact 183 recommendations have been set out within the policy in terms of the reduction of greenhouse gas and a new climate action plan is being developed and this will develop five-year carbon budgets and sectoral targets establish a climate action delivery board and establish an independent climate action council as a successor to the climate change advisory council and within that there are a range of initiatives then I'd like to come back to in a moment you're also stepping up the climate action governance governance governance and which is to be welcomed and this is to allow Ireland to transition to become a climate resilient biodiversity rich strong environmentally sustainable economy so all laudable aspirations no doubt and we have to recognize absolutely that we are in an emergency but we are not alone minister and Ireland is a very very small in the overall scheme of things a very small emitter not be at large by per capita but small in overall terms in world emissions and in order for us you know to take a lead and certainly we should take a leading position but we mustn't damage ourselves completely competitively in trying to be an outlier if the rest of the world does not come and follow suit and I would like to see a lot of work done at government level in terms of and particularly in the EU level in trying to bring our EU colleagues with us on this journey and some may be more advanced than others but just in terms of some of the kind of sectoral things that you have outlined increase renewable electricity to 70% by 2030 we've heard an awful lot of that in the house at late particularly the development of offshore wind and we know that the east coast and southeast coast is largely targeted for the first developments of offshore wind which will largely be ground attached pylons and floating offshore rigs whenever they come are seen more to be more pertinent to the west coast to the deeper water but that technology is still in its infancy and probably those farms are at least 10 years away but it says what are we building all of this wind farm for well obviously to create greater renewable energy but the next question then is two questions one is how are we to build them and secondly what is this renewable energy going to support so there is an issue which i brought up in the house before which is the designation of the new wind energy port in the country and as i said before the minister ryan has previously said this is a competitive process i'm not sure what the parameters of the competition are but i would contend that this point that this port should be roselair harbour for a number of reasons not least its location uh to the fields and its location to the welsh coast beyond that it has the deep water and beyond that it is also geographically well placed to service all of the offshore down around the southwest coast and beyond all of that the southeast needs a major capital infrastructural investment from the state to redress 20 years of imbalance and this could go some way towards that so lots of good strategic reasons for doing that but the next question then as i say is what are we going to use all of this additional wind capacity for and it seems to be tailored largely to the implementation of data centers and this has come up a number of times in the house over recent days and rightly so and i have written to the minister to ask them how many mous have been engaged with today's in terms of private sector data center development i still haven't received an answer the media are now saying something over 75 that would sound an incredible number of data centers for the country and we now see the energy regulator in recent days or someone from his office speculating that data centers could account for as much as 70 percent of our future electricity generation so something is not quite right within those numbers minister and that plan needs to be looked at when revised you've also mentioned about setting up a micro scheme generation for producers to sell back electricity such schemes have been going around now for 10 years there are lots of people who have set up private windmills and indeed there are lots of windmill farms that have been approved on land that have not been developed simply because there is no way of getting a feed-in tariff to supply back into the grid you're talking about developing greater community participation in renewable energy uh projects and prices that's basically the community racing and again no information has been forthcoming from the minister or from anybody in the department as to what the legislation is going to require in terms of community ownership of wind farms the retrofitting houses has been spoken about multiple times i'm not going to go there again there's many many issues that we're going to have to get over with that and to accelerate the uptake of electric cars and vans so that all new cars and vans are powered our electric vehicles by 2030 absolutely you know a great aspiration but it won't happen unless we do something extremely independent and new in terms of taxation because that is the only way you're going to make these vehicles work out for a lot of people in the country and make them economically viable for them to purchase improving public transport yes increase the rates of afforestation and the rewetting of box bugs to act as carbon sinks minister of the forestry sector at the moment is in absolute chaos if you're not aware the amount of applications that have been done at present for both felling license and afforestation are nothing short of abysmal to be quite frank with you and essentially this is something that you're going to have to have a look at i will leave it there and pass over to my colleague but minister i do welcome the overall tenants of the plan but we have a lot of work to do around to succeed
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