Green News: €26m for energy efficiency and towards decarbonisation in higher education; Ireland’s energy-related CO2 emissions heading in wrong direction

THE Government has announced funding of €26 million for the third call of the Energy Efficiency and Decarbonisation Pathfinder Programme for the higher education sector.

This is a climate action measure which will support higher education institutions in making progress towards 2030 targets of a 50% improvement in energy efficiency and a 51% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

The pathfinder programme will continue to test a range of building retrofit approaches to build evidence and capability in the sector, and to inform decisions as larger scale programmes are rolled out in the future.

Environment minister Eamon Ryan said: “The Programme also continues to be highly successful in testing retrofit and decarbonisation solutions in higher education campuses across the country, meaning that we are gathering the evidence needed to scale up and speed up our transition over coming years."

Ciarán McCaffrey, Head of Capital Programmes in the HEA, added: “We welcome the funding available for another round the Energy Efficiency and Decarbonisation Pathfinder Programme.

“The investment announced is key in advancing the climate action agenda in the higher education sector and will support the sector in progressing towards our ambitious 2030 energy efficiency and decarbonisation targets.

“This programme will also expand on the body of knowledge which has been built through previous rounds of this programme in relation to the retrofit pathways for the higher education estate. We look forward to delivering this programme for the sector and continuing to work with Higher Education Institutions on this important and ambitious agenda.”

THE SEAI has published its annual analysis Energy in Ireland, which shows that Ireland’s energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 5.4% in 2021.

Emissions are returning to pre-Covid levels of 2019, and further increases are anticipated based on initial data for 2022. Two significant drivers of the increase included a rebound in car use as the economy returns to pre-Covid activity levels, and an increase in the use of coal and oil in electricity generation. The current level of progress in moving to renewables and eliminating our fossil fuel use is not at the rate required to achieve our climate ambitions.

The increase in 2021 emissions was driven by electricity generation (+ 17.3%), transport (+ 7.3%) and industry (+ 3.3%) and compensated by decreases in residential (-6.1%) and commercial and public services (-2.7%) emissions.