I had the enormous honour of participating in an event for President Connolly on the climate and biodiversity emergency, organised by An Taisce. The event was called “Snapshots on climate change and its impacts on our welfare” and the President gave a powerful opening address about her vision to be a “climate justice president” (reported here). It bodes well for her presidency that she prioritised this in her first full week in office.

My speaking notes:

There is great energy in this room today. I want to speak about a different kind of energy — the energy that powers our society, and that has underpinned our economic development since the Industrial Revolution. Our ability to exploit energy has given us extraordinary material comfort and innovation. But because more than 80% of this energy still comes from fossil fuels, it is also threatening the very fabric of our society and environment through the climate crisis.

The sustainable energy transition is the defining transformation of the 21st century. It is reshaping our geopolitical, social, environmental and economic realities. Ireland stands to gain materially from this transition: the prize is a more secure, resilient, equal and healthy society. But these benefits are not automatic. Without intentional and strong public leadership, the transition could deepen inequalities and reproduce the worst aspects of the fossil-fuel era.

1. The Prize

We do have a moral duty to rapidly cut fossil-fuel dependence. Addressing climate change is a legal imperative, and Ireland faces potential compliance costs of up to €26 billion for failing to meet our EU decarbonisation targets.

But even without the climate imperative, this transition is a no brainer. Our dependence on fossil fuels hurts us deeply.

• The hardships after the inflation and energy-price spikes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were a direct result of fossil-fuel dependence and inefficiencies in our energy system.

If our homes had been insulated, running on clean heat; if public transport had been expanded and vehicles electrified; if our electricity system did not rely so heavily on imported gas — households and businesses would have been protected.

• Importing fossil fuels from countries such as the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia also leaves us geopolitically vulnerable.

• And fossil fuels bring energy poverty, deprivation and air pollution.

There remains a powerful narrative that sustainable energy is more costly, and that we need more fossil fuels to secure affordability. But this is grounded in 20th-century thinking, and ignores the reality of clean-energy technologies.

These technologies are not speculative.

Renewables are now the cheapest form of new electricity capacity in nearly every region of the world. Costs have plummeted. Renewable power generation is set to overtake fossil fuels in the coming decade. Batteries are following the same trend: costs have fallen by 99% in three decades, and 20% in the past year alone.

2. A Personal Glimpse of the Future

This is not abstract for me.

I still drive an 11-year-old Nissan LEAF — the first mass-market electric car. Last year a small social enterprise, Range Therapy, replaced its aging battery with a new one: triple the capacity, smaller in volume, and cheaper than the original.

But what is more exciting is what we’re doing with the old battery. It is not waste. It is being installed in my home as stationary storage. This will allow us to:

• power the house with cheaper, cleaner electricity, charged when wind and solar are plentiful;

• maintain lights, heating, water and internet for many days in the event of a power cut;

• cut my electricity bill by over one-third.

In this one ordinary household you can glimpse the potential of an energy system powered not by burning fuels, but by renewables: cleaner transport, circular use of materials, and resilience in the face of shocks.

The technology is the easy part now. The difficult part is organising our politics and institutions so everyone can benefit like this.

3. The “Big 5” — We Have the Solutions Now

With SEAI, we developed a kind of cheat sheet for the energy transition: the “Big 5” actions that deliver most of the necessary emissions cuts this decade:

1. Renewable electricity — the backbone of the transition.

2. Reducing car dependency through public transport, compact development, walking and cycling.

3. Electrifying transport, recognising that rural settlement patterns mean many will still rely on cars.

4. Clean heat in our homes.

5. Clean industry — electrifying factories where possible and using materials far more efficiently.

These Big 5 measures are largely cost-effective. They require upfront investment, but that investment pays back by reducing fossil-fuel bills.

The technologies exist now to get off fossil fuels urgently. Because of this technological revolution, and a decade of international cooperation since Paris, we have already avoided the very worst global-heating scenarios. We were once on track for 4°C; we are no longer on that pathway.

My research group supported the Climate Change Advisory Council’s carbon budget analysis, and our scenarios show clearly that Ireland can cut the vast majority of fossil-fuel use by 2040.

4. The Political Challenge

But again — the technology is the easy part.

Even though these measures are low cost, the market alone will not deliver them. Fossil fuels are still more profitable. So public policy must not only build clean energy, but also curtail fossil fuels.

This is not yet happening.

• The massive concentration of data centres in Ireland means their electricity demand is outpacing the growth of wind energy.

• They are putting such pressure on the network that we are expanding fossil-gas infrastructure to serve them.

• One cluster of data centres in Dublin is planning to run on gas and will alone emit the equivalent of one-third of the entire electricity sector’s 2030 emissions target.

By facilitating this expansion, government is ignoring its legally binding carbon budgets.

And renewable projects themselves will lose public support if they are perceived as serving corporate rather than national interests.

5. The Risks of an Unregulated Transition

An unregulated energy transition can replicate the worst features of the fossil-fuel era:

• Instead of solving energy poverty, poorly designed policies could deepen it.

• The public could shoulder the costs, for infrastructure, for environmental impacts, for landscape change, while benefits accrue to the few.

• By outsourcing biofuel production internationally, we risk outsourcing serious environmental harm. Much of the biofuel blended in diesel is linked to palm oil, a major driver of tropical deforestation. And biofuels often function more as a lifeline for the fossil-fuel industry than as genuine climate solutions.

False solutions that sound plausible, but are at best distractions, are unfortunately all too common.

6. What Is Required

To get us on track, we need:

• Brave political leadership that puts people and equity at the heart of the transition.
• An ambitious plan, grounded in the new reality of clean technologies and in engineering pragmatism — because rebuilding our energy system is a major technical challenge.
• A clear vision of a clean, equitable energy system that does not fuel the climate crisis and that provides for the material needs and prosperity of everyone in this country.

The Presidency has crucial symbolic power in articulating such a vision, one that unifies and catalyses us in the face of an emergency.