MINISTER FOR CLIMATE Eamon Ryan has pushed back on praise for fossil fuels as ‘gift from God’ by the President of Azerbaijan, saying that “God also gave renewables” and “looked after Ireland by giving it wind”.

He was speaking to media at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where tens of thousands of people have gathered for an international United Nations climate conference.

The COPs are intended to be a forum for countries to negotiate important collective decisions about climate action – last year, for instance, brought an agreement about transitioning away from fossil fuels in the energy sector.

However, President of this year’s host country, Ilham Aliyev, previously described fossil fuels as a gift at a meeting of ministers in Germany in April. His comments were widely reported by media outlets. 

“I said it several months ago and all those international media who want to attack me quoted me that I said it was a gift from God, and I want to repeat it today here at this audience. Every natural resource is a gift from God, whether oil, gas, wind, gold, silver, copper,” he said. 

Eamon Ryan, who has been appointed by the COP29 presidency to co-facilitate negotiations about climate adaptation, arrived to the conference from Dublin early this morning.

Speaking to media at the conference venue, the minister said that transitioning to renewable energy and improving energy efficiency is “the peace project of our time” in order to reduce conflicts catalysed by extraction of oil and gas.

Ryan said that he knew Azerbaijan’s president had “said yesterday about God-given fossil fuels and we have to use them, but God also gave renewables”.

“It comes down from the heavens in the form of solar power and the weather systems. That’s going to be the centre of the of the energy transition, the economic transition, the just transition,” he said.

On whether Ireland might ever pursue nuclear power, he said: “I don’t think Ireland would go into nuclear because God looked after Ireland by giving it a lot of wind, and we’ve already shown, even in cloudy Ireland, that solar is now cheaper.”

He said he welcomed a decision yesterday by the UK’s electricity regulator to approve two new interconnectors with the island of Ireland: one between Scotland and Northern Ireland and one between Wales and the Republic.

Climate scientists from around the world agree that phasing out fossil fuels must be done as quickly as possible in order to stop climate change from escalating further.

The main item on this year’s agenda at COP29 is setting a new global target for climate finance that would be used to enable developing countries to take climate action – something that’s crucial both for their own sake and for the rest of the world given that climate change is a global problem.

At least $1 trillion is needed each year at a minimum to enable developing and small island countries deal with the climate crisis, which they have historically contributed to causing the least compared to high-income countries but yet have the least resources to be able to mitigate and adapt. 

In Ireland, it’s coming up to the time of year when the government would ordinarily be publishing a new Climate Action Plan but Ryan confirmed that the general election has disrupted that process.

Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan says that the election has gotten in the way of Ireland's next annual Climate Action Plan

He says it will be a less significant plan than in other years but that he hopes it can still be published before Christmas under a caretaker government pic.twitter.com/DDb3wiqgXp

— Lauren Boland (@laurenanna_1) November 13, 2024

“The election has obviously got in the way and we couldn’t bring it before the election because there’d been a statutory consultation period, but that will be delivered quickly,” he said.

He said, however, that updates to the plan are “not as significant” as in previous years, adding: “We’ve always said that the really significant change for us would come in the following year’s Climate Action Plan.” 

The minister said that he is “hopeful it can be done before Christmas” even as a new government is being formed after the election.

“The department would have to judge. I don’t think it would contravene what a caretaker government can do. It’s already on track, it’s already known what we would include, so yes, I hope we can get that done before Christmas.”