Reflections on Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment: Volume 2

Achieving climate neutrality by 2050

Dr Olga Grant reflects on the second volume of Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment with additional response from Professor Michael Burton.

Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment (ICCA), published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), provides an assessment of the state of knowledge on climate change, with a focus on Ireland. Volume 2 of the ICCA addresses how Ireland can achieve climate neutrality.

Our understanding of climate change and how we can address it has progressed rapidly in recent years, as have policy responses in the European Union and in Ireland. Bringing together otherwise fragmented information in one volume is, therefore, very useful. This volume will act as an important single source of information for researchers, policy-makers, and society. It explains Ireland’s challenge within its global context, and explains key concepts such as sectoral emissions ceilings, and how they are set. It helps the reader to understand variations in terminology (for example carbon neutrality versus climate neutrality versus greenhouse gas neutrality) and different baselines. It provides clear information about baseline emissions, sectoral emissions for each of the five-year carbon budget periods, and indicative emissions for the final year of each budget period for each of the sectors. It explains how the EPA projects emissions. It details the energy sources in use in Ireland, historically, currently, and potentially in the future. It details energy use and options for decarbonising energy use in different sectors, such as transport. It explains the sources and extent of emissions as well as carbon sequestration associated with agriculture, forestry, land use, and land use change.

This volume succinctly summarises Ireland’s international commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement and under our own policies. We are told that ‘Ireland has the high-level political ambition, and the necessary technologies’, and it is clear that there has been great progress in the development of approaches to address different aspects of decarbonising the economy. It is also clear, however, that considerable challenges remain.

Where gaps in the knowledge base exist, they are highlighted, including a lack of studies examining climate neutrality pathways for Ireland, and limited coverage of decarbonisation options for Ireland outside of carbon dioxide emissions in the energy sector. It is hoped that the ICCA will be updated every few years – further volumes might benefit from clearer context for some of the statements derived from literature, and some discussion of the relative merits of conflicting literature. Distinguishing between peer-reviewed and other publications, and explaining this distinction, might help decision makers. Future Summaries for Policymakers might benefit from the inclusion of key data, to help policymakers to use it to decide on a course of action – although to some extent this is already covered by clear direction to relevant sections of the main report.

Overall, this volume is an excellent reference, in which policymakers, researchers, and others will be able to find the sources relevant to their area of interest. It does not, however, clearly show where we have got to in different sectors, and what we must do now (including the options and unknowns). The Synthesis Report describes the ICCA as a starting point for further dialogue. A useful step forward from Volume 2 would be the preparation of such summarised key data, key steps, key options, and key remaining questions. This would enhance the potential for decision makers and policy makers to benefit from the extensive work that clearly went into this publication. Such focus will benefit climate action in Ireland.

Dr Olga Grant

Response from Professor Michael Burton:

How to deal with climate change and related environmental problems resulting from human impacts on our planet is the challenge of our age, a challenge that can appear overwhelming at times. Yet respond we must, and policy and decision makers who can influence the taking of necessary actions must be supported when doing so, for the pushback they can receive when making unpalatable choices may be considerable. Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment is a document that can help here, summarising a number of specific mitigating actions that can be taken across all sectors of our economy, as well as providing insights that may help motivate and explain why these actions must be taken and where they fit into the global picture of mitigating climate change.

Importantly, the document also does not shy away from saying that there remain uncertainties in how the greenhouse gas reductions might be achieved. As both our understanding of the science continues to improve and the technologies we require develop and mature, the means by which we achieve climate neutrality will evolve. However, the imperative remains to act now using currently understood best practice, and to introduce new and improved technologies as and when they become available, in particular those that relate to specific conditions encountered in Ireland.

Read Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment in full.

About the authors

Dr Olga Grant holds a degree in Environmental Sciences and PhD in Biology. More recently, she completed a professional certificate in Sustainability Strategy, Risk and Reporting. She followed her PhD with a further 14 years of research in plant-environment interactions, before joining the Civil Service, where she has worked in different Departments on diverse aspects of environmental and climate policy.

Professor Michael Burton is the Director of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. This brings together running the oldest continuously active observatory in the UK & Ireland with its longest operating planetarium. It is a job that embraces fundamental research, education, public outreach, history, heritage and culture within a single organisation. Michael is an astronomer, with research expertise in the formation of stars in our Galaxy, and an educator with 25 years university-level teaching (including Director of Teaching in Physics), combined together with an active involvement in science communication and outreach.

The views expressed within this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or of the Royal Irish Academy.

About the blog series

In January 2024 the Environmental Protection Agency published Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment (ICCA), a comprehensive and authoritative assessment of the state of knowledge around all key aspects of climate change, with a central focus on Ireland. The report provides an assessment of our understanding of climate change, tying together all available lines of evidence to provide actionable information.

The Royal Irish Academy’s Climate Change and Environmental Science Committee recognises that it has a role to play in communication and advocacy for climate action in Ireland. Through a four-part blog series the committee aims to distil and offer perspectives on each of the four ICCA volumes with the goal of highlighting the importance of their content and promoting and sustaining a discussion around the topics addressed.

Read the next blog in the series here.