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IRELAND RANKED BOTTOM among the EU 27 for its share of energy consumption coming from renewable sources last year.
In 2022, 13.1% of Ireland’s energy consumption came from renewable sources, according to the latest figures from Eurostat.
This was slightly below Malta’s rate of 13.4% and Belgium on 13.7%.
Topping the list was Sweden, on 66%, considerably higher than second-placed Finland on 47.8%.
It means Ireland is one of 17 nations below the EU average of 23%, with France, Spain, Germany, and Italy among the other EU nations to fall below the average.
Share of energy from renewable sources in 2022 (%):
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) December 28, 2023
🇸🇪 66
🇫🇮 47.8
🇱🇻 43.3
🇩🇰 41.6
🇪🇪 38.5
🇵🇹 34.7
🇦🇹 33.7
🇱🇹 29.6
🇭🇷 29.3
🇷🇴 24.1
🇪🇺 23
🇸🇮 22.9
🇬🇷 22.7
🇪🇸 22.1
🇩🇪 20.8
🇫🇷 20.2
🇨🇾 19.4
🇧🇬 19.1
🇮🇹 19
🇨🇿 18.2
🇸🇰 17.5
🇵🇱 16.9
🇭🇺 15.2
🇳🇱 15
🇱🇺 14.3
🇧🇪 13.7
🇲🇹 13.4
🇮🇪 13.1
Under the first EU Renewable Energy Directive, which is a legal framework for the development of clean energy across all sectors of the EU economy, there was a target of at least 16% of gross final energy consumption to come from renewable sources by 2020.
Ireland’s target for the end of this decade is 34.1%, and it is likely that this target will be increased in the coming years.
The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) in its 2023 Energy in Ireland report described energy trends this year and last year as “sobering”.
“While the roll-out of electric heat pumps means that we have never seen more renewable energy used in Irish homes, we still have 94% of home heating coming from fossil fuels,” said the foreword to the report.
The report noted that last year, 85.8% of Ireland’s primary energy requirement came from fossil fuels, and the total energy demand last year was 4.7% higher than in 2021.
Ireland also imported 81.6% of its total primary energy requirement last year according to the SEAI.
For comparison, the average energy import dependency of all EU member states in 2020 was 57.5%.
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For a wealthy, supposedly well-educated country, we are so poor at getting many important things right…..housing, health, energy.
@ecrowley ecrowley: consumerism has taken over, nothing else really matters anymore
@ecrowley ecrowley: with regards to the environment we have a minister who talks absolute muck, I would hazard a guess that 90% of the population have no belief or faith in him. When that happens we are on a loser straight away
@Derek Lyster: what muck does he talk? Maybe you could provide a few significant examples?
@ecrowley ecrowley: That has never changed.
@Ivan Dickson: If you do some research, you will find that the “consumer” is the backbone of every developed economy!!
@ecrowley ecrowley: its because of the “we need housing” ” but you’re not putting them there”, we need windfarms, “but no you cant put them there” we could have massive wind farms across the west coast but the locals keep objecting
@Alan: we were 1 of only 2 EU members not to sign up for RePowerEu which would’ve given us billions in grants towards establishing biomethane as an alternative, renewable energy source. A green td and councillor both told me biomethane establishment was part of their Climate Action Plan, but neither could/would answer why Éamon Ryan didn’t sign us up for the scheme. Pure incompetence my guess.
@Alan: pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth is muck, then he has a little power nap at work and he’s off again. He can’t hold himself in an interview, when he gets questioned he just waffles, most of the targets that he sets are missed by miles and from what I can see his only achievement in government is extra poverty on those who can least afford it. If you want to know about the muck he talks then listen back to interviews he has done.
@Alan:
He told us more than 10 years ago to switch to diesel cars that it was better for envoirment!!!!
I kid u not , look it up…
He now regrets it….u couldnt make this whopper up.
Did i also mention growing cabbage on your window !!!!!!
@Derek Lyster: yeah he does all his work when asleep
@he didnt take the 120k because he already got it s: yep nimbyism has always held Ireland back, or made essential projects uneconomical…
@Alan: Alan, He and his party have this country ruined….you want an example: how many two lane roads in the country have had a lane converted to a cycle lane….prime example being the Condell road and New Bridge in Limerick where there were 2 lanes coming into the city and now there is crazy congestion coming into the city because the remaining lane cannot handle what 2 lanes could barely accomodate before, after conversion of the left one to a cycle rail….or how about the stopping of the Galway ring road which is another.
@Joe x:They got the kids out on bikes for the New Bridge during Covid for a piece on RTE . They haven’t been seen since.
Limerick has a load of cycle lanes, but no one seems to be using them.
They did a new stretch for people that might know near Ballyclough, it’s covered in twigs. Can’t see anyone cycling on that.
Good for CRH though. Oh! 1 ton of concrete is 1 ton of Co2.
@Derek Lyster: summed it up perfectly. A spoofer of classic proportions.
Grim reading. I know there might be some mitigation in the fact that we use a lot of natural gas whereas say other countries burn coal so emissions per head might not be so bad in comparison and the fact that we are an island but still. All the waffle about becoming a renewables powerhouse just seems deluded. As with everything way too slow at a snails pace waiting on the whole thing to be barely implemented so that the usual suspects can get even richer from it. Will be interesting to hear what kind of spin they try to put on things.
@John Moore: As you mention what kind of spin will be put on this I reckon that the Brits will be blamed.
Leadership in this country, by all parties and politicians, is nothing short of shambolic …
@Connor Savage: Trying to implement anything in this country without massive objections and getting anything beyond the not in my back yard crew is impossible……not everything is our ‘leaders’ fault.
@uUleRhCu: The “leaders” are in charge of introducing policies and processes. Clearly, they have failed
I bet we have 1 of the highest tax’s on “carbon”
@derek doogan:
10 seconds on a Internet search would have told you that statement is completely false.
But then, it might not suit your agenda.
We are 7th highest. The highest are Switzerland and Sweden with carbon taxes up to 3 times ours but for instance Spain is less than half.
@P.J. Nolan: However, Switzerland is not an EU member, which would move us to at least 6th by your listing. Are there any other non-EU members on it?
This seems odd as our wind generated capacity is quite high for electricity. What renewables are other countries using?
@Shaner Mac: The devil is in the detail here. Hydro is included which distorts in favor of the Nordic countries. Wind and solar are fastest growing. There are transfers in the report which distort. Norway generates the most hydro in Europe but sends all it’s gas to Europe so someone else can burn it. Ireland dropped 3.5% due to transfers and not reporting biofuel generation. The reporting of a graph without analysis is lazy reporting.
@Shaner Mac: it’s energy as poised to electricity, so includes heating , transport etc
We’ve little district heating , heat pumps etc
@Shaner Mac: I think there’s a difference between the % split when you look at how much we generate vs. how much we consume
@CTW: not lazy but the narrative
Despite all the sponsored media messaging about upgrading houses to more efficient version of what they are, the vast vast majority of homes are not suited to the use of heat pumps without making those houses air tight which is massively expensive and way beyond the resources of the majority of homeowners. If Mr Ryan and his govt want to save the planet and achieve the impossible, then all profit and vat and costs beyond material and labour costs have to be removed. If it’s really about saving the planet then we need to attack this in a way that is not an opportunity to make a fortune for the suppliers and installers otherwise it is just going to impoverish those who can’t do it. This has to be done as a national effort for the good if all and not as another opportunity for greed and profit to be maximised.
@Eddie Garvey: My 1940s semi in Dublin got an A2 BER rating after the retro fit with a heat pump and solar panels..
The house stays at a steady 19C.
@Peter McCormack: what kind of money did you have to spend and do most people have access to the money?
@Eddie Garvey: If a house was built before 1978 it is not suitable for a heat pump. That will be quite a lot of houses.
@Peter McCormack: my 70s terrace house wouldnt need an expensive heat pump if i got external insulation ,and new doors+windows , my gas heating is rarely used as it is , i have a basic stove ( which i should upgrade ) and a simple mhrv..
So much for having a Green party in government, they can’t even get that right, all they want to do is Tax the living daylight out of us.
So all the talk from government has just been found out as a load of nonsense
Fook Europe
@tara tevlin: We’re fooking ourselves.
Probably another excuse to heap more tax on the population
Who cares ? It’s cold, light a fire/whatever. If it’s not, don’t.
Some of Europe, like France using Nuclear.
@Eamon Guilfoyle: Is nuclear power considered renewable? I personally don’t believe so, but it does reduce the use of fossil fuels, but has its ken share of waste by-products
@Joe x: it’s sustainable , not renewable
I see, in another article, that Seasonal Affective Disorder has become Social Affective Disorder, as though some massive joke is being played on society.
Forget academics; they are petty and would dump society into a misery bin and portray Irish society as lousy on account of climate change modelling. The real culprits are the media, who do not inform people who suffer from the winter blues how the planet’s motions create the seasons at a time when the darkest evenings are over. Temperatures generally fall for a while after the Solstice, so the extended period of darkness affects those who cannot reconcile the natural cycles with how society operates these days.
@Gearoid O’Ceilleachair: No Gearoid, it has not. Seasonal Affective Disorder has not become Social Anxiety Disorder. They are 2 separate conditions that happen to share a common acronym. It’s not the first time such a thing has happened, and it will not be the last. It all depends on the context.
@Gearoid O’Ceilleachair: they haven’t changed it. It’s two different things, one relating to seasons and dark mornings/evenings and lack of sunlight and the other is to do with social situations and peoples inability to deal with them due to the over reliance on social media to conduct all their social interactions.
Develop the gas fields and oil deposits off the coast and elsewhere because we are going to need the gas and oil, renewables are great when the wind blows and the sun shines but are proven to be unreliable.
Who cares??
@Gerry Dornan: if you’re happy to pay more and more each year for imported fossil fuels, then no reason to care. On the other hand….
@Fran Ken: why don’t we kill off the national herd of cattle and import meat from thousands of miles away in say Brazil. That wouldn’t make any sense would it
@Francis O Riordan: Or stop eating beef, maybe.
Yeah. Top of the table. Do we get a medal?
Before everybody starts panicking, 17/27 countries are below the EU average. Would be more interesting to compare these figures with ones from 5/10/15 and 20 yrs ago. Moving to renewables is a huge transition. It will take many years. Sweden didn’t get to 66% a handful of years!
Embarrassing.
The three party government are joke when it comes to recycling and reusables.
Most local authority are still using plastic sacks in street bin, that still go to landfill.
That’s just one issue, the second is you buy a bale of renewable heat logs costing €6.99 and included in that price is 00.83 cent vat, so much for encouraging eco friendly.
Irish motto: progress but no change please.
Let’s go Nuclear!
Yet we’re so heavily taxed to be green… this government is a farce.
More tax will fix it.
What a shambles!
Strange colour coding, shouldn’t the highest be green? Followed by orange and red. 15% and you are green. Very strange.
They’ll have to dream yet another tax to put on top of carbon tax, excess duty, vat , Nora tax, better energy tax !!!!
Unacceptable breathing and unsuppressed attachment result in all known karmas.
Ireland and the Green Party circus are happy to sign up to every initiative going but just don’t ask us actually do anything to achieve those targets, Christ no, that means actually making changes and sacrifices.
Oh tax me harder Eamo! Harder. More regulations please, also take away more of my civil liberties please, oooh it feels go good, harder! Harder! More carbon tax! More debt, more EVs, more regs.
Human flourishing depends on fossil fuels.
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