Interview with Eamon Ryan, 
Minister of Transport, Climate, Environment and Communications, Ireland

10 May Interview with Eamon Ryan, 
Minister of Transport, Climate, Environment and Communications, Ireland

Prisma Reports:  “You are leading Ireland’s green revolution and paving the road for Ireland to meet its ambitious goal to become carbon neutral by 2050. I am very excited to hear about your Ministry’s latest initiatives to promote sustainability and build a climate-resilient, circular economy.”

PERSONAL – Although you have been the leader of the Green Party since 2011, you recently stood up to take charge of the ministry of transport, climate, environment and communications in June 2020 amid a humbled economy due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s an interesting time to be in politics! To begin the interview, I’d first like to ask what you consider to be your biggest accomplishments since stepping up to the plate a year ago?

Eamon Ryan: The biggest accomplishment was the agreement of government of a new climate bill, which is legislation that sets us on a very ambitious target. We want to half emissions in the next decade, in this decade, and go climate neutral like a lot of our fellow colleagues in the European Union, US and elsewhere by 2050. Our target is a real leap because we have to catch-up, our emissions have been increasing in recent years, but there is now really strong political commitment in Ireland across the board for action on climate. I don’t think there’s been an example of a country which has halved its emissions in a decade but that’s what we’re aiming to do. Other countries are setting similar, ambitious targets, but I still think ours is one of the most challenging. The structure we’re using in that legislation we’re using is a series of three five-year budgets, with sectoral targets within that, an annual Climate Action five-year plan which, with annual reviews. It is really strong and very ambitious. I think that in the first year, it has been our biggest achievement in government, and now we have to implement it. 

Prisma Reports: ECONOMY – Although bolstered by a growing GDP, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on the global economy – and Ireland is no exception. Despite this, Ireland has managed to record positive growth in 2020, the only EU member do so. While the end of the pandemic seems in sight, we are far from being out of the woods. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges Ireland continues to face in the post-covid world, particularly related to your portfolio?

Eamon Ryan: One of the real challenges is keeping some of the benefits. COVID has been a tough experience in every country, in Ireland as well as elsewhere. It’s true, our economy has probably not contracted as much as others. We’ve maintained our manufacturing. Our main exports and industries have maintained their structure through the lockdowns. The real success that will probably come out of this, is how we come out and keep some of the benefits from the technological revolution that’s taking place; the use of online services, the use of the changes in the public service, the ability of our health system to change radically in the last year and a half in a way that no one could have expected. That they would be able to meet such demanding change, and in the public service, I think that culture of innovation, of changing towards more flexible, efficient online digital delivery of services is one of the big tasks. It’s a very simple way of putting it, if we have been able to change everything to protect our older people in COVID, which is what we have done; can we now use that same sense of urgency to change everything to protect our younger people’s future? That is an obvious kind of crisis. We’ve addressed the COVID crisis but there’s also an ecological crisis we have to address. My job coming out of this is to steer some of the public service and financial commitment towards the bigger, wider, longer-term crisis and do so in a way that it sets us on the path towards net zero by 2050. There’s every reason for that to happen in the transport, digital and energy areas which I’m responsible for, there are three revolutions taking place in the world: digital revolution, a clean energy revolution and a transport revolution. We’re not going against the grain of progress of technological innovation, or of history, we’re going with it. We want to be quick; we want to be flexible in the public service and we want to maintain public support for that mission, that’s my key task in the next year.

 

‘’The fact that the European Union, US, China, Japan, and the UK are all committing to these ambitious climate action targets sends a signal in terms of the investment community, this is only going one way.’’

Prisma Reports: RENEWABLES – Wind energy now provides for 42% of Ireland’s energy demand, and investments from public entities in Ireland’s wind and solar companies have spurred massive innovation, including floating solar panels for Ireland’s large maritime area. What is the government doing to support innovation and application of renewables, and what areas will see the most growth in the coming years?

Eamon Ryan: In this area we are in a leading position. As an isolated island grid system, the volume of renewable power at one-point last week was that we were running 73% renewable power on the entire system. For any engineers out there who run power systems, they realize that that’s ahead of the game. We are challenged every 1% we go up, learning how you do it as no one has done it before. 

The real large-scale development in that regard will be in offshore wind, most of our renewables so far have been largely onshore wind. Even Ireland is now going to become a centre for solar power, but the real competitive advantage we have is in our ocean area. Our sea area is 10 times our land area. It’s one of the windiest places on the planet. It is where the Gulf Stream comes up and hits Northwest Europe. With the reduction in price of offshore wind, the prospect of floating offshore wind technology allowing us to go further into the sea and the prospect of converting that very large power supply through the likes of hydrogen or ammonia fuel factors, is the real big economic opportunity for our country and potentially for Northwest Europe. It will only work when we collaborate with our colleagues, when we work with our neighbours. It’s building into connection with France, building further into connection with the UK, even looking further afield. I’m always talking to my Spanish colleague saying, “could we swap Spanish solar with Irish wind?’. That’s the way we need to think, big. That context is where there’s real opportunity.

To make that happen, we have a new maritime area planning legislation, which is key to get the planning of it right. We’re also working with European colleagues on the European council and what we call the Northern seas grid initiative, where we think of this new energy revolution as a regional one and the balancing capability that brings is key. It’s that good planning, good inter-connection and a good auction system to give to de-risk projects. They are the three key elements I think in making the revolution happen.

Prisma Reports: TRANSPORTATION – Although many areas have been hit hard recently, Ireland’s logistics community saw a growth in revenue, a testament to previous investments and robust infrastructure. However, Ireland’s transportation network requires upgrading to meet growth in traffic and new technological innovations in transportation. What investments has the government made in the last year in expanding and modernizing transport infrastructure, including the creation of zero-emission transportation options like the Greenways?

Eamon Ryan: Our climate targets break down into each sector. In transport we have some 12 million tons a year of emissions and we must bring that down to six in a decade, which is really challenging. Transport takes time, if we buy a car today it’s on the roads in 10 years’ time, or if we buy a train today it’s on the rails in 40/50 years’ time. There are three key aspects to decarbonizing transport. One is the electrification, switching to electric vehicles, electric power supplies in trains, buses and other fleets. That’s not enough on its own, it is also reducing the demand for travel, by using and, maybe, learning from COVID in this, by promoting remote working, by developing the 15-minute city concept and town centre first planning so that the need for travel is reduced. Thirdly, modal shift; we switch away from private car transport towards a hierarchy of pedestrian first, cyclists, public transport and then private transport.

If I was to pick one project or some examples, a very simple not very expensive but just transformative one is in Dublin, along our coast. In one of our local authorities, they took a coastal route, which for years we had been talking about it would be a very nice cycling and walking route and they took the space and using temporary measures put in a new traffic management system. They introduced a coastal route where people can walk and cycle safely up and down around Dublin Bay. It’s spectacularly beautiful, it’s transformed the public ground, the environment. People have found in this COVID period that suddenly some areas are quiet, and they can hear birdsong, or that the air is cleaner and it’s not as congested, noisy or full of traffic. That’s happened on that coastal section of Dublin Bay and I think people have responded with huge numbers using it. I think it’s been an interesting example. The modal shift that will come with that is going to be important. That is a small project, it’s not very expensive, but it was significant in signalling where we’re going to go; active travel, as part of a modal shift to reduce emissions, improve health and improve public ground to make more attractive communities.

Prisma Reports: US – US-Irish relations are at an all-time high after continued growth in the last two decades. Ireland is now America’s ninth largest trading partner – no small feat for a small nation of 5 million. American companies account for 20% of employment in Ireland, with collective US investments of $444 billion. How have recent changes in legislation affected Irish-US ties, and what implications do they have on efforts to combat climate change?

Eamon Ryan: It’s hugely important, what the US have done in their targets for 2030 and 2050 is really ambitious. Almost as ambitious as the one we’re trying to do, but in a country of that scale it is transformative. It will transform technological innovation and development. The fact that they have connected again with China regarding their ambition and that the European Union on the same day. I was pleased to take part in President Biden’s event on Earth Day, the week before last. The fact that the European Union, US, China, Japan, and the UK are all committing to these ambitious targets sends a signal in terms of the investment community, this is only going one way. For young people, this is the area where careers will come. In my mind, one of the things I said at President Biden’s event is that it’s also a peace project, because the advantage of the digital and clean energy revolution and transport revolution that will be behind meeting these targets is that it relies on network systems where there is distributed access to power.  They are distributed systems. Every part of the world has access to renewable energy in various forms. In Spain, it will be solar and wind, in the Alps it will be hydro and, in the US, a whole variety different resources. In some places geo-thermal.

It’s not a scarce commodity. There will never be a war over solar power. You will never be able to threaten, or bribe or undermine a country by saying we are going to take out your solar panels. It’s a completely different energy system, much more secure, much more stable. Yes, it’s intermittent in terms of sometimes the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, but as long as you have good grid systems to connect it. The centre of the revolution is balancing demand and balancing supply, when you do that, you can make it stable. It has to be a better economy, the reason this has taken off and it’s going to take off more, is because the cost of solar and wind have come down below the cost of any other source. It’s just wiping the floor with other technologies and other power supply systems in terms of competitiveness. 

When you design your system around it and as you electrify your transport system, heat system, and you have this balancing capability, whoever does this will have an economic advantage. We’ll see other industries migrate to that area. You will see data centres coming to where that’s done or modern manufacturing or other systems centre around it. The great thing about it is that my success is not undermining someone else’s, because they also have access to similar power supplies. It is a transformative project not just in terms of the energy system or environment, but in terms of security.  One of the things I’m particularly pleased to see in the US Administration is the return of John Kerry to his role in terms of specific responsibility for climate. He gets this energy security, this climate security issue, like no one else. It is of huge significance, not just for climate, but for much wider geopolitical purposes.

The last thing I’d say, not just in terms of Irelands relationship, is that we are very lucky we’re on the UN Security Council at the moment for these two years. We are chairing the working group in the UN Security Council on climate and security. We were elected to the Security Council mainly by developing countries and by small island states. We will be working with the US administration and others and saying the key prospect, as we go into Glasgow, as we go to the next COP after that in Africa is to see this as a development opportunity for developing countries and for the small island states. Our whole financial support mechanisms, our World Bank funding, our IMF structures, our development aid funding should be targeted on this view of climate security as being centre stage. The reason you focus on that is because it brings you to attention about climate adaptation as well as mitigation, about the needs to be resilient for the change that we now know is already going to come. Again, that is the best security response. 

The reason I mentioned that again is that I was talking to a friend this morning in regard to the American perspective. In my sense of climate, what works best, and I’ve seen this here in the working environment, is cross party collaboration. When it’s not a divisive issue, when it’s not a left/right divide, rural/urban divide or younger/older divide. Similarly, then in the US and elsewhere, the understanding of this climate response being the best security policy, the Republican Party are aware of that and the military systems are aware that this is the biggest security issue. So, by addressing it as a security issue, I think it may be possible in the States to get more bipartisan support for it. As a small country, which just happens to have a position at this time on the UN Security Council chairing the working group on climate security, I think we have another country which has a good tradition particularly in the developing world on climate adaptation and resilience and on support for UN Security peacekeeping and so on. We have hope for a useful opportunity to bring a bigger wider perspective of climate security, and I would use the central issue for foreign policy in our time.

Prisma Reports: Final message to the readers of Foreign Policy magazine?

Eamon Ryan: I wish you well in COVID. We’re still not out the gate.  Most of the world is still in a very precarious position. I hope we all get through this safely.