Ireland's Flexibilities

Due to Ireland's international and European position as a relied upon food producer, the country has been granted certain flexibilities under the EU that have brought Ireland's targets from 20% below 1990 emission levels to 20% below 2025 emission levels. The Land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) flexibilities allows for Ireland to account for greenhouse gas removals of up to 26.8MT CO2eq through the removals of emission by land use practices (i.e. Carbon sinks through afforestation and bog restoration practices etc.)  The Emissions Trading System (ETS) flexibilities have also allowed Ireland to use emission reductions from other sectors to reduce emissions from the agriculture sector in order to meet targets. The Government's latest Climate Action Plan aims to deliver the full LULUCF flexibility available to Ireland in the context of the 2030 greenhouse gas targets(Action 132, p.110) . This approach has been contested and referred to as inadequate by the most recent Climate Change Advisory Councils Annual review  (CCAC) which claims that it was actually LULUCF that increased national emissions in 2017 by over 1.7 million tonnes.

According to the EPAs latest projections, even under an Additional Measures Scenario that fully utilises national flexibilities granted, in compliance with the EU’s Effort Sharing Decision  (Decision No 406/2009/EC) 2020 targets, Ireland’s non‐Emissions Trading Scheme emissions are still projected to be 5% and 6% below 2005 levels in 2020. This is a far reach from the set target of 20% below 2005 levels by 2020. Ireland's 2030 targets are also projected to be in exceedance of 52 ‐ 67 Mt CO2 equivalent with the  gap potentially narrowing to 7 ‐ 22 Mt CO2 equivalent if both the ETS and LULUCF flexibilities described in the Regulation are fully utilised4 (EPA,2019).

Current techniques used to compensate as credits to allow Ireland to meet national targets under the EU flexibilities will not be enough to counter our extremely high rates of emissions in this sector. According to the CCAC, policies that operate across the food system, including those that reduce food loss and waste and influence dietary choices, enable more sustainable land-use management, enhanced food security and low emissions trajectories (CCAC,2019).