Carbon Tax Increase

State enforced poverty on the way

Leo Varadkar has said that in the next budget the carbon tax will have to increase to meet our climate change obligations. At the same time, he said that there would be increases in social welfare expenditure further contributing to our unsustainable government spending and debt bubble.

The carbon tax rate is currently €20 per tonne, the Unelected Citizen's Assembly have called for it to be raised to € 70. It will lead to an increase in heating and motor costs at a time when electricity bills have also increased and are among the highest in Europe, hitting the poor the most. In essence, this is the Irish government enforcing poverty on the Irish people through constant meddling in the energy market with taxes and levies, in defiance of the Irish Constitution which states that :

The State pledges itself to safeguard with especial care the economic interests of the weaker sections of the community, and, where necessary, to contribute to the support of the infirm, the widow, the orphan, and the aged. Varadkar says he will implement "complimentary measures" for those worst effected by the carbon tax. A case of the government trying to solve problems that itself has created, at the expense of the taxpayer, of course.

At the same time, they are hypocritically backing the push from big corporations for power guzzling data centres which ESB Networks recently said would lead to a significant surge in demand for electricity generation :

"over the past five years new users - largely data centres - have used capacity on the network that historically would have catered for 30 years load growth. To put it in context, the current load in Dublin is around 1,200MW with potentially more than 1,000MW of data centre requirements to be connected".

The Grange Castle area in West Dublin has seen a raft of applications for data centres. To power them, at least two gas power stations are planned for Grange Castle and Clondalkin which will drastically increase emissions.

The Climate Change Advisory Group which includes economist John Fitzgerald of ESRI claim we need to reduce emissions by 1 million tonnes of carbon per year.  This is impossible with the planned data centres in the pipeline. 

Last year, total CO2 emissions from power stations in Dublin were 2.1 million tonnes (EPA). Using the above ESB figures, this means that an extra 1,000MW of data centres would lead to additional emissions of 1.8 million tonnes. The current generation fleet in Dublin is all gas powered, and it is assumed that the new generators would also be gas powered (one of the planned generators in West Dublin has said they will convert to biogas in 5 years - lets see, why not commence with biogas and save conversion costs?). 

So everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room and acting like a carbon tax will have an impact on our emissions, when in fact a limit on the number of data centres would have the most significant impact on reducing emissions. Our government somehow manages to worship at the alter of multinationals and genuflect to the climate god at the same time.

There are currently no politcal parties that I know of who oppose the carbon tax. Surely a great political opportunity to be had.




From the Sunday Times: 
• https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/dublins-big-data-centres-devour-all-the-power-tbq3xdfh2

Media Hypocrisy on Leo's Wind Farm Gaffe

By Owen Martin

The email Leo Varadkar sent to Failte Ireland

There was much consternation in the media over Leo Varadkar's wind farm "gaffe" at the White House where he boasted that he rang the local council and managed to stop a wind farm from being built beside Trump's golf resort in County Clare. There was talk of cronyism and political favors. The facts turned out to be different. Varadkar, then the tourism minister, emailed the tourist board Failte Ireland advising that they make a submission on the development. Failte Ireland make submissions on planning applications all the time, including on wind farms. If one thinks logically about it, how could a tourist board not oppose a wind farm in a tourist region ? The only issue is should they really need prompting from a minister to know that a wind farm might damage tourism in an area. 

Compare the outrage from the media about Varadkar's comments to the appeasement when the Government announced they would change the planning rules to facilitate large multinationals by taking rights away from objectors to data centres (see here). Here, the government is not as much interfering in the planning system, but radically changing it to favour developers. There was no outcry from the media. There was no rally call to defend the rights of citizens. Suddenly, the concept of equality took a backseat to expediency and the latest fad of the day. 

In January of this year, the Irish Courts determined that An Bord Pleanala (the main planning authority in Ireland) must, in relation to European Union Projects of Common Interest (PCIs) :

act as a clearing-house or framework coordinator for the development consent process. It is not a role that requires any substantive decisions to be taken regarding the acceptability of a proposed development  [Martin Vs An Bord Pleanala].

In other words, once the European Commission decides something needs to be built, the planning authorities in Ireland must approve it. The High Court also ruled that "it is not the function of An Bord Pleanála to review government policy or to consider public submissions in relation to government policy. 

Once again, this ruling, which effectively limits the rights of citizens to challenge government and EU decisions, was ignored by the media. This is the kind of environment where cronyism thrives unchallenged and unhindered. Objections to developments based on logic and evidence can be easily dismissed. 

An independent and effective planning system is simply not possible with the current system, let alone with the system that is being planned to facilitate data centres. If the rights of citizens were protected in the planning system, then there wouldn't be any problem with cronyism or political favors as the system would have to take account of facts, evidence, transparency and due legal process.