Today I had a meeting with the Department of Energy on the energy policy. Many of the arguments made on this blog were put forward including the Energy Bubble graph and the warnings from industry and Representative Bodies. Some points that came up was that a Cost Benefit Analysis of a plan or programme was not actually required by law, which is not my understanding of the environmental legislation. The other thing I gathered is that the focus will be mainly on CO2 and fuel savings in the electricity sector rather than in other sectors such as airlines, transport, heating etc.
A new plan is been drawn up for 2030 targets and will be open to submissions from the public. So it looks like the current policy will be with us for many years to come....
High Court Case to halt NREAP
In other news, Pat Sword's legal challenge to halt Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) re-commences next Tuesday at the Four Courts. The case centers on the lack of compliance with the Aarhus Convention and SEA Directives. The State will be arguing that this is mostly historic at this stage.
What an amazing concept that a cost-benefit analysis of planned public expenditure is "not required by law". I can't imagine a chairman explaining to shareholders at an AGM that a cost-benefit analysis of planned company expenditure had not been carried out as it is "not required by law".
ReplyDeleteI do hope that the learned justices rule in Pat Swords NREAP challenge that a moratorium must be declared pending the conduct of a thorough mid-term review. This would be normal business practice in any commercial organisation, and what can be more commercial than the massive REFIT subsidy contracts that are being entered in to in the name of the Irish public?
The Department's plan is to ignore all the non compliance issues for their plan up until 2020. There are now formulating a new policy post 2020. They accept an SEA is required, but reject the call for a cost benefit analysis in that assessment on the basis that it is an EU legally binding directive. They claim the lack of an SEA at EU level for the renewable programme and the lack of an SEA at Irish Level for the NREAP is of no consequences. Aarhus is not in their thoughts at all. The up shot of all this is that the department is making up the rules to suit a predetermined policy, they can't abide by the rules because the policy is based on assumptions about the sayings of co2. They hope to build another 2000 to 3000 mega watts of wind and believe they can identify site where resistance will be less. They believe all the lies told about Denmark and are unaware that the policy failed in Germany. They are out of control
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile this is news you won't hear about Danish Wind, Ireland is lucky to have the common law to allow victims sue for nuisance.
ReplyDeletehttp://wcfn.org/2014/07/10/denmark-wind-turbines-disrupt-menstruation/