The Irish government has released its new Climate Action Plan, which details how Ireland will achieve its 2030 targets for CO2 emissions and prepares to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. Ireland will set out a system of 5-year carbon budgets (2021-2025, 2026-2030 and 2031-2035) and sector targets, with penalties if targets are not met. A detailed sectoral roadmap has been established, which is expected to deliver a cumulative reduction in emissions of 58.4 MtCO2eq outside the ETS, 17 MtCO2eq within the ETS, and 26.8 MtCO2eq from land use over the period 2021 to 2030.
The Climate Action Plan aims to more than double the share of renewable energies in the power mix, from the current 30% to 70% by 2030, by adding 12 GW of renewable capacity. It plans to open up opportunity for community participation in renewable power generation, to streamline the approval process for renewable power projects and to introduce a support scheme for micro-generation, allowing homeowners to generate their own electricity and to sell the surplus to the network.
Ireland also plans to accelerate its building retrofitting programme, to install 400,000 heat pumps in homes and businesses, to replace existing CO2-intensive heating systems. A new Retrofit Plan will be adopted to retrofit 500,000 homes. In addition, Ireland aims to reach 950,000 electric vehicles by 2030 and to ban the sale of diesel and gasoline cars from 2030.
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