The Government is considering changes to its stance on liquefied natural gas (LNG), which bring risk of environmental pollution and jeopardising its climate targets, a sustainability conference has been told.
Ireland had banned fracking, which is linked to environmental pollution, and fossil fuel extraction within its jurisdiction yet “LNG, scarily, is coming back to discussions within the Government”, said Niamh Guiry, a scholar at UCC and member of Not Here Not Anywhere – For a Fossil Free Future.
If imported and processed here, LNG would jeopardise carbon budgets and lock in fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come, she said at a conference in Dublin on how climate action can accelerate achievement of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs).
The Coalition’s focus should be on decommissioning gas infrastructure and going after big fossil fuel consumers, notably data centre operators, she said –though energy security was an issue. “Relying on LNG will not give us the energy security we need. There’s no energy security without energy sustainability,” Ms Guiry added.
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While there was speculation LNG was going to be imported from the US, it would be impossible to say if the gas was fracked or not, she said.
Lucas Snaije, cities co-ordinator with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said: Cities were “first responders” to the climate crisis.
“Transformation is not going to happen without a paradigm shift on how we move through cities,” he said. That meant active travel (walking or cycling) and public transport in the main – and occasionally using a car, “hopefully an EV”.
It took 28 UN climate summits to secure the first mention of fossil fuels in an outcome statement, said Mary Robinson of the Elders. This was due to being up against “a huge weight” of fossil fuel lobbyists, estimated to be spending $4 billion a year on communications alone.
The former president said there was a need to combine volunteerism and the Irish “meitheal” spirit of helping one another to counter opposition from the fossil fuel lobby.
The SDGs were supposed to be a roadmap for a sustainable future, she added, “but we’re not making the progress we should be because of the fossil fuel lobby . . . Ireland must lead the change to a fossil fuel-free future.”
Department of Foreign Affairs climate director Dr Sinéad Walsh said there was a need “to be very clever about how we do multiple things with the same euro or dollar”. This was against a backdrop of a lot of countries reducing funding, or at the very least not increasing, their overseas development aid and climate finance when “needs are escalating dramatically”.
While only 17 per cent of the goals were reported to be on track “with only six years to go”, there was ongoing support in the programme for government, while the next national SDG implementation plan was being drafted. The good news was that Ireland would meet its international climate finance goal for 2025 - more than doubling funding over the past three years, she said.
This year, the Government was supporting biodiversity under this heading with a €15 million contribution to the Amazon Fund, which would have climate and SDG benefits.
The focus was also on climate action but in combination with food, health and education, while also addressing related gender issues, she said.
