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Combatting Global Warming

The Challenge

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Without urgent and decisive action within the next decade we are likely to experience flooding affecting one sixth of the global population; drought and famine for 200 million of the world's poorest citizens; extinction of up to 40 per cent of all species; and more extreme weather patterns threatening lives and livelihoods over the coming decades. The cost to the global economy could be up to 10 per cent of GDP per annum. The human and environmental costs are unquantifiable.

The international consensus on the need for radical action to avoid serious climate change has been growing steadily since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997. The British government has indicated its intention to achieve a CO2 reduction of 60 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. Germany and France have signalled their intention to push climate change up the European agenda, and Sweden is on track to being an oil-free economy by 2020.

Ireland has had ten years to prepare for our first-round commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, commencing on 1 January 2008. Despite this, Ireland is set to overshoot its target by 7.2 million tonnes of CO2 a year for five years. The government has already sanctioned the purchase of €270m worth of carbon credits (or 'clean air') from abroad to compensate for its failure to meet our domestic target. However, this figure assumes that global demand for carbon credits will remain reasonably static. The truth is that the direct cost of failing to meet our CO2 reduction target could be up to €750m for the first Kyoto period alone.

Ireland needs to take serious action now to meet our Kyoto commitments and to position ourselves for a medium to long-term economic climate where energy and environmental issues will dominate. The message of the recent Stern report for the British chancellor is clear: early action to avoid runaway global warming far outweighs the costs. Decisions taken over coming decade will be crucial in determining success or failure in the fight against climate change.

The next government will have responsibility for negotiating Ireland's second Kyoto commitment, and for putting policies in place between 2008 and 2012 to achieve that target. The present coalition parties have a profound credibility deficit when it comes to delivery on the environment, and greenhouse gas reduction in particular. From construction to planning, this government has consistently demonstrated its willingness to appease vested interests over long-term environmental sustainability. They cannot be trusted with our children's future.

Ireland can do better

Instead of regarding CO2 reduction as a threat to the economy, taking action to combat climate change at home and abroad should be an opportunity to put Ireland on the cutting edge of new markets for low-carbon goods and services. Ireland has one of the most favourable wind and tidal regimes in Europe. It could go from being a net importer of polluting fossil fuels today to being an exporter of clean, renewable energy within a few decades.

What Labour will do

Taking action at home to avoid debt abroad

We will set the following greenhouse gas reduction targets:

• To meet our 2008-2012 Kyoto target of annual greenhouse gas emissions of 63 Mt CO2e per annum (or +13 per cent relative to 1990) by 2012.
• To reach 1990-level greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.
• A reduction in CO2e up to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
• To achieve a carbon neutral economy by 2030.

Looking to our economic future

What Labour will do:

• Publish a Climate Change Bill setting out legally binding emission reduction targets in five-yearly budgets.
• Establish a Department of Energy, Climate Change and the Environment to progress these important policy areas and to drive national climate change strategy.
• Create an environmental pillar in the social partnership process.
• Establish a National Forum on Climate Change involving all relevant stakeholders and the public to generate a national consensus on the measures we need to take to meet existing and future greenhouse gas reduction obligations.

Our energy future

What Labour will do:

• Set a target of 50 per cent electricity generation from renewables by 2020. Some of this electricity will be exported.
• Introduce a renewables obligation for electricity suppliers.
• Steadily reduce Ireland's almost complete dependence on a centralised system of large fossil fuel power plants and extremely inefficient distribution network and develop a national electricity grid that is suitable for decentralised renewable electricity generation and local micro-generation.
• Develop up to 1000 MW of interconnection between Ireland and Britain by 2012 and progressively invest in our interconnection capacity with the UK and mainland Europe.
• All Area Development Plans will be required to incorporate micro-generation, such as small-scale Combined Heat and Power plants, anaerobic digesters or domestic energy generation from solar or biomass into all new residential and commercial developments.
• We will give the ESB a new mandate to develop renewable energy in Ireland with special emphasis on marine technology.
• We will establish a Centre of Excellence for renewable energy technology, with a specific focus on developing technologies not currently commercially deployable and energy storage capacity.

A fair and equitable energy market

What Labour will do:

• Legislate to ensure greater accountability to Dáil Eireann in the regulation of the exploitation of Ireland's natural resources, and to address the health, safety and environmental implications of licences granted.
• Keep the gas and electricity networks in public ownership.
• Establish a strategic gas reserve to protect ourselves against gas shortages.
• Extend free insulation to pensioners in low-income households.
• Increase the fuel allowance to address fuel poverty.

Better building

In government we will:

• Require all new homes to be built to a passive house standard from 2012.
• Begin to make new housing stock more efficient from 2008 by requiring all new homes to use 60 per cent less energy for space and water heating than houses built to current building standards.
• Overhaul and expand the Greener Homes scheme so that grants are used to achieve a 'whole-house' reduction in CO2 emissions. Grants will be tied to packages of measures. Different combinations of insulation options, window replacement and/or installation of renewable energy technologies will be available and subsidised through a mixture of grant aid and low-interest loans, repayable after a sufficient period of time has passed to allow the householder to accumulate financial benefits from energy savings.
• Include the installation of renewable technologies in a major expansion of the Warmer Homes scheme.
• Explore the possibility of establishing a minimum energy efficiency standard for homes undergoing major refurbishment.
• Mandate local authorities to facilitate voluntary group insulation schemes to reduce the cost and inconvenience of retrofitting.
• Introduce a stamp duty credit linked to a sustainability rating structure to reduce the price of energy efficient buildings.
• Fund local authorities to retrofit local authority dwellings to improve their energy efficiency and reduce their carbon emissions.
• Require all commercial and public buildings, where practicable, to be built to be carbon neutral by 2012.
• Ensure that local authorities have sufficient trained building inspectors to enforce regulations.
• Ban the use of hollow blocks in the construction or extension of all residential, commercial and public buildings.
• Conduct an energy audit of all public buildings and retrofit them to a high standard of energy efficiency accordingly.
• Require the cost of carbon emissions as they relate to both the construction stage and projected ongoing energy requirements to be factored into all public infrastructure projects.
• Promote environmentally sustainable methods and materials for construction, including green cement.

Instead of regarding CO2 reduction as a threat to the economy, taking action to combat climate change at home and abroad should be an opportunity to put Ireland on the cutting edge of new markets for low-carbon goods and services.

Doing more with less energy

• In partnership with ESB we will roll out a national programme to install a smart electricity meter showing real-time use of electricity in every household in the country.
• Inefficient incandescent light bulbs will be phased out by 2012. Planning for sustainable communities

We will:

• Link planning permission for residential developments to the provision of public transport, schools, healthcare, recreational areas and sources of local employment.
• Require commercial developments to have comprehensive public transport links before they are given planning permission in order to minimise the car-dependency of their employees and customers.
• Encourage clustered rural and urban regeneration.
• Make greenhouse gas emissions reduction a central tenet spatial planning. Ireland has one of the most favourable wind and tidal regimes in Europe. It could go from being a net importer of polluting fossil fuels today to being an exporter of clean, renewable energy within a few decades.

Cleaner transport

The importance of quality public transport goes beyond climate change: it is about quality of life. We have set out elsewhere in our manifesto our commitment to delivering integrated public transport systems and upgraded rail and rural transport links as a matter of priority.

To further facilitate cleaner transport, we will:

• Progressively introduce a 5.75 per cent renewables obligation for fuel suppliers so that biofuel-blend petrol is delivered at the pump. This target will be subject to the environmental sustainability of domestic and international bioenergy crop production.
• Abolish excise duty on biofuels.
• Rebalance VRT to reflect CO2 emissions per kilometre travelled. This would be a revenue neutral tax reform designed to encourage the purchase of low-emissions vehicles.
• Progressively reform company car tax so that this charge is calculated according to CO2emissions per kilometre rather than mileage.
• Convert the maximum number of public motor vehicles (state cars, public buses etc) to run on biofuel.

Sharing the cost of carbon

Labour in government will oblige the commercial and public sectors to accept a greater share of the carbon reduction burden than they have to date. We will examine the potential of a domestic emissions trading system for the largest energy users in the commercial, service and public sectors. A similar system will be operating in Northern Ireland when the British government implements its planned domestic carbon trading scheme.

Reducing farming's greenhouse gases

We will work with all the stakeholders in agriculture to:

• Support the top-up per hectare payment to supplement the existing EU grant for energy crops.
• Provide start-up aid for co-operative groups setting up supply chains in the wood biomass energy sector.
• Encourage partnerships between local authorities and these local supply chains.
• Support relating all agricultural supports in the post-CAP period to greenhouse gas abatement, whether through the adoption of low-impact farming methods required by REPS, conversion to organic farming or the production of energy crops.
• Undertake further research, currently overseen by Teagasc, into the improvement of herd management in ways that will lead to a reduction in methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
• Expand research into carbon sequestration through farming methods, soil types and forestry.
• Aim to at least double the carbon sequestered by sinks from 2.07 Mt CO2 to 4 MtCO2 in the next Kyoto period.

Nuclear Power

Labour is committed to keeping Ireland nuclear free and will not establish any nuclear facility in the state. We will continue to oppose the Sellafield plant and other installations in the UK which pose a risk to our people.

International leadership

Climate change is a global problem that can only be solved by collective action by the international community. The ability to make strategic foreign policy decisions at an EU level will be vital in future climate change negotiations, particularly if the EU is to exploit its diplomatic and economic power to the full.

• Labour is committed to supporting a Climate Change Protocol to the stalled Constitutional Treaty, setting out what the EU-27 would do to tackle climate change through the mechanisms it creates. We believe that this could also help to break the European deadlock, and to underscore to the citizens of the EU the relevance of a strong, cohesive union that can act in their interests on this major global issue.

Ireland needs to take serious action now to meet our Kyoto commitments and to position ourselves for a medium to long-term economic climate where energy and environmental issues will dominate.