Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill a Token Gesture and Commerically Reckless

The Irish Government is set to divest over €300 million of it's investments in mostly US fossil fuel companies. This paves the way for more investments in renewables, including the Irish wind sector which as this blog has shown has been making losses in recent years. 

BP data shows that oil, natural gas and coal will still be the dominant energy sources in the future even with rapid growth in renewables. 

BP Data

In transport, oil will comprise over 80% of the energy sources used by 2040. 

The mission statement of the NTMA (National Treasury Management Agency) is to manage public assets and liabilities commercially and prudently.  The fossil fuel divestment bill is at odds with this mission statement as it's purpose is to divest from the most profitable energy markets and from energy sources that will be in high demand for many more years to come. The NTMA do not seem to have carried out a commercial assessment of renewable sources like wind energy. Is it commercially viable or not ? The fact that many Irish wind energy companies are selling up and divesting from the wind energy business altogether might give you a clue. 

The farcical nature of the discussion that took place around the Bill was on full display in the Dail (Irish parliament) with contributions made like this one by Michael D'Arcy of Fine Gael :

I am concerned about something that is happening now, which I see in my own county, whereby people are objecting to everything. It is everywhere. Wind farms are objected to. We brought in new controls to keep turbines back from property boundaries, which is appropriate. There are objections to solar farms. People are creating fear and doubt and saying the craziest things about renewable energies that are clean and tested and have been for decades. It has to stop or we will never meet these targets.  Events like what happened with the Apple data centre in Athenry cannot continue. People who object to a project because it is close to them are wrong in so doing.

It doesn't take too much research to learn that data centres will consume more fossil fuels and make it harder to meet our targets. But here we have somebody in government who believes the opposite. I was waiting for him to say the sun revolves around the earth next.

The fossil fuel divestment bill is a token gesture, will have zero impact on global emissions and will result in losses for the taxpayer.