14 minute read
Úna Fitzpatrick reflects on the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan
Úna FitzPatrick, Project Manager of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan (AIPP), discusses how the plan, now in its second iteration, can encourage biodiversity action across all sectors.
“We have amazing biodiversity in Ireland, but biodiversity loss is a huge problem,” assesses FitzPatrick, who sets out that often the biggest challenge is that the complexity of biodiversity means that people and organisations find it difficult to feel empowered to know how to tackle it.
FitzPatrick works for the National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC), which manages information on Ireland’s wildlife and has recognised that identifying simple vehicles, such as a focus on pollinators, can be used to carry the biodiversity message to a wide audience.
Setting the context of the challenge, the project manager says that Ireland has approximately 31,500 species living within 117 habitats. Of the habitats assessed, only 15 per cent are deemed to be in a good state, while 17 per cent of species are threatened with extinction from Ireland.
On the reasoning for the focus on pollinators, FitzPatrick explains: “Pollinators are an element of biodiversity that people understand and relate to and the need for actions can be communicated as a clean and simple message. Additionally, changes can be easily monitored and importantly, protecting pollinators has knock-on benefits for biodiversity generally.” Around 90 per cent of the world’s food is provided by 100 crops, 71 of which are pollinated by bees, and Ireland’s value of insect pollination to food crops is estimated to be up to €59 million per year. The Project Manager explains that while an awareness of the role of pollinators in food production exists, what is often overlooked is the impact of pollinators on wider biodiversity. A total of 78 per cent of Ireland’s wild plants benefit from insect pollination.
“Wild plants sustain all other biodiversity, as well as providing carbon sequestration and flood mitigation services, not to mention the joy, and health benefits, of places where we can connect with nature, the importance of which has been highlighted by the pandemic,” she says.
The plight of pollinators is aligned with decline in Ireland’s biodiversity. A prime example of which is the island’s 101 bee species. Aside from the honeybee, most commonly farmed, 100 of the bee species are wild but one-third are threatened with extinction from Ireland. NBDC data shows a significant decline in the abundance of common bumblebees since 2012.
FitzPatrick assesses: “Rare species are disappearing through loss of semi-natural habitats and common species are declining in abundance as a consequence of how we manage the rest of the landscape.”
The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan was developed in 2015 as a collectively agreed positive framework to address the problem and identify evidence-based actions to help. In essence, as FitzPatrick outlines, it was a call to action recognising that everyone can help.
The All-island Pollinator Plan 2015-2020 boasts a range of successes, not least that 86 per cent of the island’s councils have become partners. Additionally, Green Flag awards have allowed many parks to become pollinator friendly, as has the Tidy Towns competition in including over 200 communities and alongside schools, supporting businesses have risen to well over 300.
FitzPatrick adds: “This work has culminated in over 2,400 sites being logged as pollinator-friendly and a significant increase in volunteer recording. Other notable successes include the Farmland EIP project 2019-2023, which protects farmland pollinators and the establishment of the Irish Pollinator Research Network.”
A new version of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan for 2021-2025 was recently published and FitzPatrick explains that the ethos for the plan was to be more ambitious yet remain realistic.
“We want to build on the first phase and encourage more land to be managed for pollinators and biodiversity,” she says.
The plan has six objectives in the form of:
1 making farmland pollinator friendly;
2 making public land pollinator friendly;
3 making private land pollinator friendly;
4 all-Ireland Honeybee Strategy;
5 conserving rare pollinators; and
6 strategic coordination of the plan.
Accompanying these objectives are 186 actions, a significant increase from the 81 included in the first plan. Included in these actions are a variety of initiatives ranging from expansion into new sites, such as healthcare, the encouragement of more ecological corridors and the establishment of a Wild Bee Way, celebrating the excellent examples of restored pollinator habitat across the island.
More fundamentally, FitzPatrick outlines work underway to better track changes and monitor pollinators across a fixed network of 50 sites beginning 2022 and a push to better explain the wider benefits of pollinator actions, particularly to climate and health and wellbeing.
Importantly, the project manager says that at the end of year one of the plan, 81 per cent of the 186 actions are either completed or in train. However, she acknowledges that the plan’s ambitions are not without challenges and recognises the need to fully normalise a better way of managing the island’s whole landscape to permanently support struggling biodiversity.
To this end she says that long-term participation with the AIPP needs to be built on not only trust in the experts running the programme but also acknowledgements of the efforts made and crucially, clear demonstrations that the actions taken are making a difference and having a positive impact.
“Lots of small actions, taken together, can begin to solve big problems,” she concludes.
Harnessing Ireland’s wind and hydrogen potential
In light of increasing energy prices and the need to source energy from alternative sources, the European Union is stepping up measures to improve its energy security and reduce its dependency on gas imports, writes Jim Dollard, Executive Director of Generation and Trading at ESB.
Ireland can take major steps in this direction by harnessing the country’s abundant floating offshore wind potential to generate green hydrogen and in doing so, create an indigenous carbon free fuel source which can be stored in large volumes.
The Programme for Government outlines the potential for 30GW of floating offshore wind in Ireland. Unlike fixed offshore wind, floating has the potential to create a bespoke supply chain in Ireland with all the associated economic benefits. A report on behalf of ESB by BVG Associates has indicated that just one 400MW floating offshore project has the potential to create almost €1 billion in gross value added (GVA) to Ireland as well as thousands of direct, indirect, and induced jobs. Early development of the floating offshore wind opportunity will position Ireland strongly to build an enduring supply chain capability in this country, delivering jobs and investment to Ireland, as opposed to other countries who have similar potential to develop these supply chains. strategy, Driven to Make a Difference: Net Zero by 2040, the ability to produce and store green hydrogen at scale from floating offshore wind is a key component in terms of delivering a clean energy system for Ireland. It could also prove to be a game-changer in terms of enhancing the country’s energy security.
Ireland has a tremendous opportunity to develop a major indigenous energy storage capability, with ESB already having set out its stall with a number of key project proposals including Green Atlantic at Moneypoint. As part of this ambitious project, ESB will transform the County Clare site into a renewable hub which includes a floating offshore wind farm, wind turbine foundation construction hub, a green hydrogen production, storage, and generation facility. The first component, a €50 million synchronous compensator which will enable higher volumes of renewables on the system, will be commissioned later in 2022.
This capability will be key in solving the issue of renewables intermittency, delivering zero carbon dispatchable power and most critically, provide Ireland with increased energy security. The scale of the opportunity is very significant and could see Ireland reaching energy independence in the medium term. This needs to start now to maximise the many associated benefits for Ireland.
An accelerated approach to floating offshore wind and green hydrogen will ensure our renewable energy targets are met, will deliver material energy security benefits for Ireland, and will provide the potential to grow a supply chain of scale on this Island.
W: www.esb.ie
Green deal: Environmental compliance
Aurel Ciobanu-Dordea, Director of Compliance, Governance and Support to member states in the European Commission’s DG Environment says that much work remains to be done if Ireland is to bridge the gap of environmental compliance.
In an address setting out the proposed actions of the EU Commission in relation to the environment in 2022, the Director took the opportunity to identify a number of significant shortcomings for Ireland in relation to its environmental responsibilities.
Ciobanu-Dordea identified four areas in particular but was most strident in relation to access to justice, stating that the European Commission will act if Ireland does not address litigation costs.
“Ireland continues to be the most expensive member state in which to make an environmental claim before the courts,” he highlights, adding: “The case law of the national courts has meandered through different interpretations on the cost rules and has left many environmental litigants unable to predict with any certainty the costs exposure.” The Director says that a particular concern for the EU Commission was an “increasingly aggressive” stance being taken against environmental campaigners, highlighting the use of strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) suits but also pointing a finger at mainstream media and politicians.
Stating that the rule of law and its respect, in relation to protection of the environment, is one of the biggest priorities of the Commission, the Director described circumstances in Ireland as “disappointing, and even worrying” and called for a “radical change of behaviour”, describing such conducts as highly unusual for an advanced society like Ireland.
In relation to water, the Director said that Irish authorities still had significant work to do, pointing out that around 50 per cent of urban wastewaters are still not collected and treated in compliance with the Urban Wastewater Directive and highlighting leakage rates recorded as one of the highest in Europe.
Adding that the Water Framework Directive has still not been fully transposed into Irish law and outlining increased pressure on water quality, particularly from agricultural sources, Ciobanu-Dordea says that he hopes 2022 will be a year of more decisive action by Irish authorities than in the past.
Speaking in a wider EU context, Ciobanu-Dordea says that a priority of the EU Commission is to demonstrate that the Water Framework Directive “is not a paper tiger” and that there are strong elements and obligations within it.
Pointing to a pilot investigation launched in 2021, the Director says that he wants to see it continued, adding: “We will move in certain cases for certain obligations because we want to make sure that all the domestic authorities which are relevant for water use, including agricultural authorities, are on board and that coherent and strong actions are applied in order to attain the targets of the Directive.”
Biodiversity
On the “serious challenges” that exist in relation to nature and biodiversity in Ireland, the Director says that while the Commission has welcomed the completion of the terrestrial designation of special protection areas for birds, “we have noted there is significant work to be done to protect terrestrial birds in practice,” he explains.
The Director called for urgent action to address the serious decline of certain breeding birds, particularly farmland birds and called for the need to finalise identification and designation of marine sites, highlighting Ireland’s holding of one of the European Natura 2000 network’s poorest records with less than 2.5 per cent of marine waters protected.
“Action is also needed to address the decline in terrestrial sites under the Habitats Directive. Ireland’s own habitats report shows that only 15 per cent of habitats are in favourable condition and over half are suffering from ongoing decline,” he says, raising the issue of peat bogs, in the context of ongoing legal proceedings brought by the Commission.
Finally, Ciobanu-Dordea highlights that Ireland is the only member state yet to transpose the revised Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive, adding that despite being classified as key economic activities, no EIA has been carried out in the areas of peat extraction or afforestation.
“Both are regularly the subject matter of complaints cited to the Commission of negative pressures on biodiversity in Ireland’s own Article 17 reports on conservation status,” he says.
Ciobanu-Dordea was speaking in the wider context of plans by the Commission to bring forward a range of environmental policy initiatives in 2022 and 2023 as part of its Green Deal. Published prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Director stresses that the Green Deal will remain a main political compass for the Commission.
Ciobanu-Dordea believes that a focus on the green transition will help build further strategic autonomy, which he says the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis has revealed as key for the European Union.
“We will keep this political compass with a focus on the green deal by also bearing in mind the challenges and opportunities the green transition can bring to our societies. Not everyone is equipped in the same way economically and socially to face the green transition, and this is why we have developed a Just Transition Fund and a social fund to accompany the climate transition. However, we will need to embed further awareness about the social pressures in the legislative proposals we will bring to the fore in 2022 and the following years.”
The future of waste to energy
The thermal treatment of waste to recover energy is not a new concept, writes Catherine Joyce-O’Caollai, Corporate Affairs Manager of Indaver.
Waste-to-energy facilities treat black-bin waste that cannot be reused or recycled to produce energy in the form of electricity or heat. The electricity is exported to the grid, while steam or hot water can be delivered via district heating networks to provide space and water heating needs to homes and industry, typically through a network of insulated underground pipes. While the production of renewable electricity and heat make an important contribution in meeting Ireland’s climate and renewable energy targets, Indaver is currently exploring the potential of hydrogen production to assist in the decarbonisation of hard to abate sectors, along with carbon dioxide (CO2) recovery. Plans at Indaver for a 10MWe hydrogen electrolyser would make use of energy which would otherwise be wasted during times of electricity curtailment. This typically happens at Meath Waste-toEnergy on windy days or nights when supply outstrips demand whereby the facility is instructed to reduce the export of electricity to the grid. There are a range of potential end uses for this hydrogen, such as injection into the gas grid, for use as a transport fuel or to replace the use of fossil fuels in energyintensive manufacturing industries. A European Union (EU) funded initiative, the HECTOR project, has even seen the deployment of hydrogen-fuelled refuse collection vehicles.
The EU recognises the importance of hydrogen in an evolving energy system. The European Commission’s 2020 Hydrogen Strategy for a climate-neutral Europe clearly outlined its ambition for hydrogen in order expand its use in sectors where it can replace fossil fuels. The EU’s Fit for 55 legislative package, which aims to reduce its net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030, includes proposals to enable and promote the use of hydrogen in the wider energy mix. Carbon capture use (CCU) technologies involve the capture of CO2 from industrial processes such as waste-toenergy, for use in a range of sectors such as food production. Capturing carbon for re-use elsewhere, such as the horticultural sector for heating greenhouses, would have the added benefit of avoiding the use of fossil fuels. As communities and businesses in Ireland work towards a GHG emissions reduction target of 51 per cent by 2030, Indaver has the potential to play a role in assisting sectors which may be unsuitable for electrification replace their fossil fuel consumption.
T: +353 1 697 2900 E: catherine.joyceocaollai@indaver.com W: www.indaver.com
