It is difficult to be positive about Ireland’s future when it comes to our environmental policy.

We are a country still playing catch-up trying to improve our basic infrastructure, such as sewage treatment and water supplies.

In Arklow, where I went to secondary school, construction began this year on a sewage treatment plant that was first proposed 33 years ago. More than 30 towns and villages around the country still lack treatment facilities.

While attending the school, in my early and mid teens, my early very basic foray into journalism came in writing letters to newspapers complaining that Ireland wasn’t recycling enough of its rubbish.

Some of these letters were prompted by the fact that dozens of articulated trucks would pass up and down the road I lived on every day, on their way to a landfill dump near Avoca.

This carried on for a number of years. Then, one day when I was away at university, one of these trucks took a corner beside the end of our garden too fast and jackknifed, spilling roughly an articulated trailer-full of rubbish.

These days, at least some of the rubbish that was coming down from Dublin and elsewhere in those trucks is now incinerated in the monstrosity that blots the city’s coastline and skyline, the Poolbeg incinerator. That may be progress of a sort, but it is an ugly kind of one.

What will become of it if we move to a circular economy where household waste is largely eliminated – efforts towards which have recently begun?

Perhaps we can blow it up, as has been done with old coal power stations. Or maybe it will join a host of other stranded assets

Data centre deluge

Another example is data centres. 

We have 4.2GW of installed wind capacity, which for generation planning purposes, is taken to have a capacity factor of about 35 per cent.

That means that Eirgrid can only assume that the wind will fully blow 35 per cent of the time – producing 1.47GW of power – when planning to have enough installed power generation so that the lights don’t go out.

But by early 2022, installed data centres will be drawing on about 1.1GW of power, and consuming about 15 per cent of all power generated here – a figure that could at least double by 2030, according to various predictions.

1.47GW minus 1.1GW leaves just 0.37GW, so have we squandered a significant proportion of the advantage – more than two-thirds, in that light – of our wind power?

Admittedly, last year 43 per cent of electricity was generated from renewables. The country has now set a target to almost double that figure to 80 per cent by 2030.

Businesses and bill payers have also paid out over €3 billion in PSO levies on their bills in the past decade, and the government estimates there are up to €6.5 billion more of such charges to come by 2030, according to a recent Irish Mail on Sunday report.

In 2019, the Irish Academy of Engineering estimated that to accommodate data centre growth, €9 billion would need to be spent on power infrastructure, excluding grid improvement costs, which will be at least another €3.2 billion. 

It is unclear what impact this would have on all our electricity bills, but where such costs are to facilitate them, they should be wholly borne by data centre operators.

That there hasn’t been an Oireachtas inquiry into how this situation came about is itself a scandal. If the media coverage of recent weeks is anything to go by, as a nation we seem to care at least as much about the Lotto jackpot not being won for six months.

As the Business Post reported in December, initially there was an effective moratorium on data centre development. Then a few weeks later, it followed up with a report saying the IDA chief Martin Shanahan had effectively ordered Eirgrid to soften its stance, and instead assess Dublin applications to connect to the power grid on a case-by-case basis.

Ireland will pay a price for years in multiple ways for this state of affairs, whatever happens.

The cost of too many data centres

We will miss our CO2 targets, for which we will either incur fines or the cost of carbon credits to make the shortfall – if not both.

We are having to spend at least €1 billion on up to 2GW of seven new inefficient, CO2-intensive gas generation plants. 

Householders and businesses are bearing the cost of the aforementioned PSO levy.

These multi-billion grid improvement costs are coming at the same time as the economy is weighed down by inflation and the costs of the pandemic.

We have surrendered a proportion of our energy security at the worst possible time: When both energy costs and geopolitical tensions are rising. PSO levies and rising energy costs are a disincentive to investment and business.

Amazon’s new data centre on the Belgard Road in Dublin. Photo: Thomas Hubert

Data centres also have an opportunity cost for the economy. A small country like Ireland only has so many sites of the type they require, and they should be used for optimum strategic economic advantage. 

Our infrastructure, the power grid especially, is limited in its size and capacity, but the demand to use it is increasing. So we must also consider what could have been located in the place of a data centre? 

Perhaps something more employment-intensive, with better economic spin-offs such as an advanced manufacturing facility and associated R&D.

What about decentralised energy?

Underpinning all this is a policy that seems to be a prisoner of a vested semi-state interest, namely the ESB.

A policy to decentralise energy production would spend the billions mentioned above on installing in each building, as much as is physically possible, solar-powered electricity, heating and hot water production, plus battery backup.

On December 21, the government announced a Micro-generation Support Scheme intended to make this economically feasible by allowing building owners to sell excess renewable electricity to the grid when they’re not using it. This is due to open later this year, one year after an EU-imposed deadline.

Your existing or future electric car could connect into your house in place of a battery backup, or at least provide an addition to it.

As a householder or small business owner, it would mean that if there was a storm like the recent Storm Barra – an event the like of which is likely to increase in both strength and frequency as a result of worsening climate change – you would largely be resilient.

If a sub-station goes down, or floods, thousands of homes and businesses are without power. If they have independent solar or other power sources of their own, they’re resilient. Increasingly, property buyers will pay a premium for that resilience. 

The ESB could have been repurposed to decentralise our energy, perhaps beginning back in 2008, when it announced various climate goals and a €22 billion investment strategy.

Offshore wind: A wasted decade

If we look instead at offshore wind, in roughly the same amount of time during which Britain has become a world leader, Ireland has just one small wind farm off the coast of the aforementioned Arklow.

Even the Green Party’s Deputy Climate Minister Ossian Smyth conceded recently in an Oireachtas debate that the nation has wasted a decade on this.

Looking at offshore wind policy now, there is a focus on our east coast, where a 5GW target is in place.

There is 30GW – or more – of floating offshore wind that could be developed off the west coast, but the attitude of the government seems largely to be that this is something that will happen after 2030.

By early 2023, according to the Climate Action Plan (CAP) annexes, a new state agency, the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority will be in place to underpin this process. President Michael D. Higgins signed the bill underpinning this new planning regime for the sea into law on December 23. Meanwhile, an auction to allocate support to offshore wind farms under the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) is to take place by the end of 2022.

But Ireland can’t go on wasting time, incurring costs, opportunity costs, and increased CO2 emissions.

Energy policy is of strategic importance for our economy as well as our climate.

It demands the kind of focus and attention that Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair put into getting the Good Friday Agreement across the line. It requires the kind of zeal and vision that we saw recounted recently in the BBC documentary, Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution.

Yet at a time when such policy has never been more important, Eamon Ryan, the minister in charge, seems to have espoused a piecemeal Green vision. It has been more in the way of motherhood and apple pie – cleaner air, retrofitted homes, and healthier living – rather than something more radical and original.

The recent findings of an EPA survey on climate action found that 79 per cent of respondents believe that it should be a high priority for the government.

Most people are in favour of using carbon taxes to reduce CO2 emissions and prepare for the impacts of the climate crisis. But will we use it to maximum effect?

“Groupthink and risk aversion”

Looking across the water, the UK’s vaccine tsar Kate Bingham said in November that Britain is “put at risk by civil service groupthink and risk aversion.”

She accused the government there of having a “devastating lack of skills and experience in science, industry and manufacturing”.

In Ireland, it seems that politicians and civil servants are happy enough with a situation where much of the thinking about climate and energy is outsourced to other organisations, at an arm’s length or more from them.

They are the semi-states, the IDA, or perhaps even certain Big Four consulting firms. Again, there’s a sense of risk aversion and groupthink.

We saw how the Departments of Social Protection, Finance and some other institutions reacted with urgency to implement business and other support at the beginning of the pandemic. But that seemed to be an exception to the pace at which the cogs and wheels of government usually turn.

Many businesspeople in the cleantech and renewables sector have been more aligned with public opinion, and ahead of where Irish politicians seem to have been, for – and by – about a decade and a half.

As a journalist, I began covering some of these matters in the Sunday Independent when I started writing for it, back in 2006. Initially, the subjects I wrote about included the carbon footprints of Ryanair and the ESB’s Moneypoint coal power station.

Looking back at much of my writing and reporting, the sense of wasted time is what stands out.

Between 2008 and 2010, I recall one conversation with an energy firm CEO about retrofits and energy upgrades of Ireland’s 12,500 public buildings. He couldn’t get traction with any decision-makers about this that would lead to a formal tender process, for example.

Eventually, in 2017, a target was set that half of them have to improve their energy efficiency by at least 50 per cent by 2030.

Looking for more positive signs, are we fostering lots of new climate tech and energy startups?

Well, Ireland had no entries in Cleantech Group’s Global Cleantech 100 rankings this year. In the past, Irish companies have won or at least been nominated for global cleantech awards, however.

In the US think-tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s 2021 Global Energy Innovation Index, we have fallen nine places since the last survey in 2016. It ranked Ireland 23rd out of 34 countries surveyed. 

A company that could prove transformational, Eddie O’Connor’s electricity transmission technology startup Supernode, may relocate to Scotland because of a lack of support here. He confirmed this in a recent interview with Thomas Hubert. This seems like a very bad omen for this sector.

But there is a disturbing sense that few people, if any, will care that Ireland might be losing a visionary company with a significant role to play in the future energy landscape.

O’Connor’s track record – with Bord na Móna, Airtricity, and Mainstream Renewable Power – speaks for itself, and it would not be wise to bet against him. By not offering the company even the minimum of support or resources, that is effectively what Ireland is doing. One wonders what hope there is for anyone else.

Pumped hydro storage – a method of storing renewable power – is another technology Ireland has lost out on. The Spirit of Ireland project, first proposed in 2009, if it had gone ahead, might be operational by now, providing a valuable addition to our energy security.

Admittedly, investors were alarmed by planning objections and delays that it was likely to encounter. Yes, critics raised engineering concerns, while others had reservations about flooding western valleys with seawater.

Some years afterwards however, one of the original team that proposed it teamed up with a couple of other businesspeople. Together, they sought to cooperate with one of the semi-state organisations, which had some land suited to a revised project.

The semi-state was uninterested, and some of the group instead are now working on a pumped hydro project in Wales, where they have found more enthusiasm. 

Home and public sector building energy efficiency upgrades and retrofits are also failing to progress at pace over the past 10 to 12 years. The same can be said for anaerobic digestion.

Ireland cannot afford to lose or wilfully squander opportunities like this anymore.

Incremental change in the face of the increasing speed and severity of the climate emergency gives a sense that we’re not just standing still or proceeding slowly, but it’s worse: We’re going backwards.

Global media reports of the melting of the Thwaites Antarctic glacier served only to reinforce this sense. 

According to one BBC News report, scientists say its instability could increase dramatically within the next five to 10 years, from its current melting rate, raising the possibility of a 65cm rise in sea levels, were it all to melt.

As climate futurist Alex Steffen argues: “We cannot act too fast. There is no degree of acceleration of action on climate that will mean greater losses than gains.

“We have never needed new thinking more. The demand for clear advocacy, for fresh foresight, and strategic acumen is effectively unlimited.”

Hydrogen hopes

The ESB plans to create a hydrogen production hub at Moneypoint, coupled with 1.4GW of floating offshore wind, while Mercury Renewables has plans to locate hydrogen production powered by a small wind farm in Mayo.

But the offshore wind element of this seems to be on the horizon sometime after 2030 where the State is concerned.

In November, Norway’s Equinor pulled out of a proposed collaboration with the ESB.

It said that it decided that other geographies are more promising or interesting to it than Ireland, adding that the regulatory process was a factor in the decision.

The ESB and the government adopted a dismissive attitude, boasting that there were up to 70 other companies interested in Ireland’s offshore wind prospects.

Meanwhile, Singapore’s Enterprize Energy is perhaps the most bullish about Ireland’s potential.

It aims to build a $10 billion 4GW wind farm off the southwest coast to power a 3.2GW hydrogen project in Bantry Bay.

COP26 and a sense of powerlessness

Looking back at November’s COP26 global climate summit, the media coverage presented the key decisions being made largely by middle-aged or older men in suits.

Greta Thunberg was obviously outside the process with her band of followers. Mary Robinson was in tears over Saudi Arabia, India and China.

European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans struck a pessimistic chord, saying: “If we fail, my grandson will fight with other human beings for water and food. 1.5 degrees Celsius is about avoiding a future for our children and grandchildren that is unlivable.”

These were the standout moments that resonated with me. Critics might say that is a gross and simplistic generalisation.

The media framing of the narrative around COP26 seemed to be one that reinforces existing power structures. It probably also reinforces a sense of powerlessness.

Journalists such as George Monbiot have argued whether capitalism is compatible with the climate crisis. 

In his Guardian column last October, he wrote: “Economic growth is universally hailed as a good thing. Governments measure their success on their ability to deliver it. But think for a moment about what it means. Say we achieve the modest aim, promoted by bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, of 3 per cent global growth a year. This means that all the economic activity you see today – and most of the environmental impact it causes – doubles in 24 years; in other words, by 2045. Then it doubles again by 2069. Then again by 2093.

“All the crises we seek to avert today become twice as hard to address as global economic activity doubles, then twice again, then twice again.”

We are “looting natural wealth from future generations,” he adds. “Capitalism, which sounds so reasonable when explained by a mainstream economist, is in ecological terms nothing but a pyramid scheme.”

But entrepreneur and philanthropist Declan Murphy, who founded the NetZero impact investment firm, told me how he saw the alternative to capitalism: “We become Zimbabwe, which is probably more damaging for the environment, and will probably be worse or at least as bad in terms of the outcome for humans.”

Humans have our 2030 and 2050 targets. But the planet’s nonlinear climate change may not respect them as it risks becoming runaway, with negative feedback loops if permafrost melts  and releases vast quantities of methane and CO2.

Meanwhile, witness the insane rush into crypto investments and NFTs as the planet burns.

Bitcoin consumed more power than the electricity needed to power Argentina last year, generating enough CO2 to negate the global net CO2 savings from electric vehicles, according to widespread media reports.

According to industry figures, about $75 billion was invested in NFTs and crypto last year – roughly the same as the Irish bank bailout cost our nation.

That was about one tenth of the $750 billion that was invested in renewable power last year, according to the IEA.

Who controls the resources needed for the energy transition?

Another subject that was not adequately debated, if at all, at COP26 was the question of the resources that the energy transition will require.

Where are the rare earth and other metals needed for batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels, electric cables, and all the other infrastructure located?

And can they be mined or sourced without betraying ESG investment principles?

This emerging paradox challenges our hopes, and “greenflation” seems likely, as Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s chief global strategist Ruchir Sharma wrote in a Financial Times column last August.

Reserves of five out of 11 key metals are concentrated in China, which is unfortunate as geopolitical tensions with the People’s Republic continue to ratchet up over Taiwan and other issues.

In order of their size, Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Indonesia, and Chile hold the next largest deposits.

It was China’s rapid growth in solar panel manufacturing that facilitated the dramatic reduction in their cost by over 90 per cent over the past decade – some involves forced Uyghur labour in Xinjiang province, BBC News reported last May, so it is not without its problems.

Rapid scaling of similar manufacturing capacity, perhaps for direct CO2 capture systems from the air, for example, but also a lot more resources and equipment, will be badly needed to deal with the climate emergency.

To deal with gigatons of carbon, economies besides China and the US need gigafactories.

Another matter to consider: Do we know if there actually are enough resources in the world for the transition?

Mining is environmentally harmful, and all of those countries will be affected by climate change.

Perhaps this is why the idea of space mining is a growing area of interest. 

Back in 2017, The Financial Times detailed the efforts of Luxembourg to become a leading country in this sector, profiling five leading companies from around the world.

It also reported that the three most valuable asteroids are potentially worth more than $100 trillion each.

Back on earth, we have seen the consequences of a global shortage of microchips, and the effects of climate change will similarly ripple through future supply chains. There will be first- and second- order effects that are very difficult to foresee as well.

To focus on one other resource, to which most of us probably don’t give a second thought, there is a global shortage of sand. 

A BBC report found that extracting 50 billion tonnes of sand and other aggregates has a huge environmental impact on people, as well as wild and marine life habitats.

Criminals are exploiting the situation – which is not adequately monitored in most countries, let alone policed – particularly in India, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa. 

Saudi Arabia imports sand from as far away as Canada and Australia. Desert sand is too rounded by the wind to be used in concrete. More jagged grains are needed to make strong concrete.

River beds and ocean sand deposits are therefore mined, destroying beaches and riverbanks, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported in March last year.

Obstacles to progress at COP26

Former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s “Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero” (GFANZ) initiative seemed to present a group of giant investment banks as some sort of saviours of the planet.

Many of the same banks that crashed the global economy in 2007 and 2008, requiring multi-trillion bailouts, which also have financed fossil fuel exploration and production to the tune of further trillions and continue to do so.

Bloomberg reported in December that they worked on about $250 billion of bond deals for them last year.

All of us paid the price of those trillions of bailouts that were necessary to preserve the global economy.  But it seems central banks won’t or can’t print money in the same way to save the planet, because economists tell us it would fuel inflation.

Well, inflation is already over 5 percent in Britain and Ireland. So how much worse would it be?

That is partly due to labour shortages and supply chain obstacles, themselves partly a consequence of the pandemic.

The banking bailouts, as we know, fuelled asset price inflation, worsening the gap between wealthy and poorer people.

Ordinary savers live in a world with deposit interest rates at zero, with negative interest rates if you have roughly more than a million in the bank. On top of that, your money’s purchasing power is now being devalued by inflation.

Wages haven’t kept pace – or at least don’t feel they have, in terms of costs of living and living standards (certainly in relation to housing and rents) – with that inflation since 2008. 

In that respect, there’s another sense that we are going backwards.

So it would be interesting at the very least to imagine a world where, instead, these trillions were invested in addressing the climate crisis.

To date, the EU has announced a €1 trillion climate measures package.

However, some politicians, such as Belgium’s State Secretary for Recovery, Strategic Investments and Science Policy Thomas Dermine say that’s not enough, and that the figure should be at least €5 trillion.

To put this in context, so far EU nations have pledged €3 trillion in pandemic support for their economies. 

British political debate before the pandemic used to feature the phrase “the magic money tree.” Politicians arguing for more money to be spent on whatever their interest was would be told that the Treasury didn’t have such a tree.

Then the pandemic came, and lo and behold, money was printed, the tree had miraculously sprouted to life somewhere in the grounds of Number 11 Downing Street.

If not using public money for climate measures is going to be a political choice, then it should be regularly scrutinised and debated.

The other side of the climate balance sheet

On the other side of the balance sheet, the costs of climate change, are worsening every year.

The US Natural Resources Defence Council predicts that for the US alone, four impacts of climate change on property losses, hurricane damage, water, and energy costs will reach almost $1.9 trillion annually by 2100.


That’s without pricing in the loss of wildlife and biodiversity – which are already at frightening levels.

A long-form investigation by Noteworthy last August found Ireland severely wanting on many levels.

The State is actively making the situation worse in some cases, and the EU has 15 legal cases outstanding against it.

Attempting to get ahead of climate damage, our Office of Public Works is building some atrocious flood defences in some towns and cities, often without planning permission.

Rivers have been turned into brutalist concrete-lined culverts, such as this one in Clonakilty.

From left: OPW Chairman Maurice Buckley; West Cork Municipal Council Chair Joe Carroll; Minister of State for the Office of Public Works Patrick O’Donovan; and Co Cork Mayor Gillian Coughlan open the Clonakilty flood relief scheme.

Work on the Annacotty weir has meant that salmon can no longer get upstream. There are “female salmon full of ova repeatedly hitting the concrete face of Annacotty weir,” according to ecological and environmental consultancy Ecofacts, which published the picture below. “They are trying to get upstream to their spawning grounds – but time and energy are running out.”

Salmon at Annacotty weir. Photo: Ecofacts

There’s surely a way to do such work that is designed to at least be partially in harmony with nature.

A nation adrift in rising seas

Back in Co Wicklow, the Dublin to Rosslare railway line is vulnerable to falling into the sea due to coastal erosion at a number of locations.

The Bray-Greystones tunnel designed by British engineering legend Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which first opened in 1855, is one such stretch being undermined more and more each year by the relentless power of the Irish sea.

The climate doublethink which we all are guilty of, probably often unknowingly, means that the county’s politicians also campaign for more efficient use of the line, plus the construction of a second one.

They recently welcomed an order of new Dart carriages, which they hope will be in use once the service is extended to Wicklow town.

The Dublin and Cork docklands have seen – or will see, in the latter – billions invested in the development of offices and apartments. Yet I have never heard any politician suggest that either city might need barriers like London’s Thames Barrier.

Would anyone like to estimate the cost of a Dublin Bay or Liffey Barrier?

With all of this in mind, I spoke to a number of leading sources who are working in the areas of renewables and climate-related businesses.

Many of them share similar frustrations about COP26 and Ireland’s climate policies.

Further reading

Part 2 – Irish innovators rearing to go in a post-COP26 world