Northern Ireland's 2030 climate target 'near impossible' warns environment committee chair Tom Elliott

Last month, the Scottish government admitted that its 2030 target could not be reached. The SNP Energy Secretary Mairi McAllan said the target was “out of reach” – leading to the collapse of her party’s powersharing deal with the Green Party and the toppling of first minister Humza Yousaf.

The events in Edinburgh have reignited questions about the deliverability of Stormont’s plans.

The NI climate change act was passed in 2022 but implementation has been delayed due to the collapse of devolution. It aims for a 100% reduction in emissions by 2050 and 48% by 2030.

Kilroot Power Station near Carrickfergus will continue to burn fossil fuels after switching electricity generation from coal to gas

There have been doubts about Stormont’s targets since their inception. The chair of the UK-wide Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned in March 2022 about the risk of “ambitious” targets damaging the credibility of the plans. Lord Debin said: “The implication of the new 2050 target is that Northern Ireland must outperform all of five of the Net Zero Pathways that the CCC developed… requiring a major step-up in policy and rapid progress over the 2020s”. He said that Northern Ireland was already playing catch-up with the rest of the UK – and that was before a two-year Stormont collapse.

The act sets carbon budgets – the maximum total amount of emissions permitted over 5 year periods. The first is 2023-27 – and officials said earlier this year that three statutory targets have already been missed. A DAERA official told the environment committee earlier this year that the targets were “very challenging”.

Asked about how realistic the 2030 target is, UUP MLA Tom Elliott, who chairs the DAERA committee, told the News Letter: “When you hear a departmental official describe an issue as ‘very challenging’ it usually means its near impossible.

“That’s how I believe best describes meeting the 48% reduction in net emissions within Northern Ireland by 2030. To put in some context, according to the UK Climate Change Committee to meet this target it would require agriculture to reduce emissions by 21%, transport by 43%, buildings by 33%, business and industry by 46% and energy by 51%, all within a ten to eleven year period.

“If we look at energy alone, it is almost impossible to get planning approval for a large scale renewable energy development, which will potentially be more difficult with Planning Appeals Commission stretched to the limit in dealing with applications.

“DAERA have already missed targets in the Climate Change process and I suggest the 2030 emission reduction will be a significant ‘very challenging’ target”.

Earlier this week the Economy Minister Conor Murphy, who has temporarily stood down due to health issues, announced a £20 million pound fund for businesses “to purchase and install energy efficient equipment that will help to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions”.

The department said that the Energy Efficiency Capital Grant (EECG) “will play a pivotal role in realising the Energy Strategy's mandate of delivering a 25 per cent reduction in energy consumption from buildings and industry in Northern Ireland by 2030”. Its says the 25% target sets out to measure energy consumption reductions that result from government policy interventions that aim to improve energy efficiency in buildings and industry.

DUP MP Sammy Wilson – a climate change sceptic – said “the truth of the matter is, it wouldn’t matter how much money you throw at it.

“You’re not going to meet the targets anyway. And the Scottish have accepted that now. It will not be too long before the UK parliament admits the same”.

He said emissions were not being cut by strategies in Northern Ireland, or indeed the UK as a whole, as carbon intensive industries such as electric car or solar panel production was being displaced to other countries, such as China.

The East Antrim MP also said that the policy was driven by “virtue signalling” – and that if it was implemented there would need to be radical changes to people’s lives, including reducing flights to once per year.

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