Agenda

“That this committee acknowledge and notes the latest ESRI and the EPA study on Carbon emission here attached. The working paper No. 740 The Global Emissions Impact of Irish Consumption was published in November 2022. This motion asks also for this motion along with the ESRI/EPA working paper be sent to all area committees for them to not it  and be sent to all staff at management level and  above in DCC. That this motion if passed be circulated  to all councils in the country.

What comes out of their study is that carbon emissions attribution to Ireland is greater than what is attributed now. It shows that Irish emissions in 2019 were 74% higher when calculated using this ‘consumption-based’ approach than with the conventional approach. Countries like Ireland had effectively ‘out-sourced’ a big chunk of our greenhouse gas emissions.The values given for countries’ greenhouse gas emissions are almost always defined as weight of relevant gases produced within that country – they are the values used in all the climate negotiations, . But a truer picture of the emissions due to a country would consider the emissions, wherever in the world they happen, due to consumption within a country. Because we import so many products from poorer countries, many of the greenhouse gases due to the goods and services that we in the rich countries consume are actually produced elsewhere on the planet.”