A leading climate expert is predicting that Ireland won’t suffer financially when we miss our 2020 emissions reduction target.
The latest report from the Climate Change Advisory Council shows that it’s not possible to meet the targets this year, and is now focussing on having greater success in 2030.
It’s recommending that carbon tax be increased to 35 euro, from its current rate of 26 euro, as one of the measures to help deliver long term emissions reductions.
Chair of the Council, Professor John Fitzgerald, has been telling The Way It Is that there will huge financial implications to not meeting the target over the next decade:
“The cost is going to be small as most of the rest of Europe, what you have to do is buy permits, buy from somebody else but the rest of Europe on average will reach it targets so its not going to cost us much.
“The problem is by failing to meet the target for 2020 we’ve an even bigger hill to climb for 2030 and if we don’t meet our 2030 targets, that will be expensive” he said.
