Green Party Energy spokesperson, Eamon Ryan TD has called for a partnership approach to formulate a new national energy policy as the ViceChair of the Danish Parliamentary Committee on Energy Policy, Anne Grete Holmsgaard,? visits the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications Marine and Natural Resources today to explain Denmark?s approach to energy policy.
Mr. Ryan said today,? “For years energy policy in Ireland has been left to theESB with the simple instruction to keep electricity costs as low as possible.? This policy vacuum has now left Ireland with a dependency on fossil fuels for 90% of our total energy supplies and the fifth highest national per capita of CO2 emissions in the world.
The impending peak in global oil production and our required reductions in greenhouse gas emissions under international climate change agreements means? that Ireland is now in a highly vulnerable position as we face into a new world energy future. The scale of change required can only bemanaged in a fair and efficient manner if our political system takes on the task of leading our society into a new post ?carbon future.”
The problem, as the head of Exxon Mobile said last week, is that the political system tends to think in two, four or six year electoral cycles whereas in the energy industry, time is measured in decades, based on the lifecycle of projects.”
To get around this problem the Green Partyis suggestingwe follow the Danish example and try to agree long term energy targets on a cross-party basis. This would be donein the knowledge that several different parties are going to have to achieve consistent annual incremental changes if we are to meet the longer term goal over the lifecycle of several governments.”
The recent example where both Government and opposition parties in Denmark agreed real energy reduction targets for the next eight years is just one in a long line of similar agreements.”
The Green Party believe that it makes sense to work with other parties to see if we can follow a similar approach in Ireland. We believe that the Oireachtas Committee structure could provide a vehicle for reaching such agreements.???
?The first step might be agreeing the medium and long term targets for fossil fuels as a percentage of our overall energy supplies in the years 2020 and 2050. We could also then agree the broad means of achieving those targets, while leaving the success or otherwise of actual implementation measures to the traditional cut and trust of political debate.”
We have also started toengage withgroups such as IBEC, the IFA and ICTU to make sure that any new social partnership agreements starts to include? energy and environmental issues on their agenda as well as the usual pay and social conditions.
Given the employment and business opportunities we should have from developing our untapped renewable energy resources and given the doubling in oil and gas prices over the last year, we feel that every party should be able to buy into this new energy future. All that is required is the political will to make it happen and the imagination to see how everything could and should be done differently.”
