LNG terminal won't bring energy security, just higher prices.
An Bord Pleanála is set to decide whether a fracked gas import terminal and power plant should be built along the Shannon Estuary in September, pending the publication of the government's Energy Security Review.
In a submission to An Bord Pleanála the proposed developer of the fracked gas import terminal, New Fortress Energy, admitted that the the process of cooling, shipping and regasification of LNG would result in 2.5 times higher carbon emissions than gas from the current gas network.
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) has recognised these inefficiencies and has announced that it would consider giving discounts to LNG terminal operators to incentivise them as they will not be price competitive with gas arriving through pipelines from Corrib and the North Sea gas fields.
Ruairi Fahy spokesperson for People Before Profit Limerick said, "whenever the word "incentivise" is used by a regulatory body it ultimately means higher prices for the consumer which will only make the current cost of living crisis worse for many households.
"If we want to actually tackle our emissions we can't keep expanding our energy generation capacity. We've got to admit the privitisation of our energy system has been a disaster. It's resulted in nothing but higher prices for families and we are now facing power cuts this winter as the focus of our energy system is on providing demand for data centres and other large energy users, instead of efficiency."
The most recent EPA report on Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions highlighted "a need for increased energy efficiency retrofit activity in order to achieve future emissions reduction commitments".
As part of the climate act, sectoral emissions targets were set in July where each sector of the economy had to agree to ceilings for emissions between now and 2030. For the construction sector reductions of 56% were expected but due, in part, to a slow rollout of retrofitting this reduction was reduced to 44%. Recognising this risk, Friends of the Environment stated in June that "There is a shortage of skilled labour and materials available to undertake retrofitting works".
The plan for the development of green hydrogen and large scale offshore wind at the end of the Shannon estuary was derailed last year when Norwegian state-owned energy company pulled out of a deal with ESB to develop 5GW of offshore wind generation capacity by 2030.
On how we can start reducing our emissions in the building and energy sectors, the People Before Profit spokesperson said "Rather than building a fracked gas import terminal we should be building factories that help us eliminate our fossil fuel use and deliver a just transition. Factories producing heat pumps, insulation, prefabricated home panels, offshore wind turbines and other products we need to get our energy use down would provide large numbers of jobs to areas of the country that have been left behind, like West Limerick and North Kerry.
"These areas get ignored for generations only to have the most polluting industries dumped on them and are then told "take it or leave it". There is no real local democracy over investment in Ireland, no alternatives are offered to areas, if there was then a terminal for importing fracked gas would be the last option anyone would choose."
