Ireland is still amongst the worst countries in the EU in the fight against climate change, new figures show.
The 2020 Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) puts Ireland 39th out of 57 countries, mainly due to its failure to cut emissions.
Ireland was ranked the worst performing country in the EU for two years, before moving up to 41st place in the overall rankings last year.
The country has made a slight improvement to 39th place, largely due to the scale of renewable energy generation and improved policy moves at Government level.
CCPI authors said that Ireland’s improvement is largely rooted in changes to policies and that if these policies are translated into concrete actions then “Ireland has considerable potential for improvement”.
The index shows that Ireland is performing very well in terms of its use of renewables, while in the ‘energy use’ category, the country received a medium rating.
Ireland falls well short of the standard in terms of its GHG emissions, receiving a ‘very low’ rating.
While experts see major deficiencies in the country’s emission reduction efforts in the transport and heat sectors, the biggest laggard sector for Ireland’s low-rated national climate policy remains agriculture
Commenting on the results of the index, Sadhbh O’Neill, Stop Climate Chaos policy coordinator, said: “Ireland’s slight improvement is based on policy promises. Now we must see the action plan to actually start eliminating polluting emissions.
“Otherwise we’ll continue to languish in the bottom half of the climate league table and fail to do our fair share under the Paris Agreement.
“Today, over 1,200 people from all around the country are meeting their TDs online to call for faster and fairer climate action.”
In 2018, Ireland was ranked the worst-performing country in the EU, for the second year running.
Then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar admitted to the European Parliament that Ireland was a “laggard” on climate change.
