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Ireland remains firmly on track to miss its mandatory 2020 European renewable energy targets for an overall 16% renewable energy share by 2020. This target is broken down into individual sectoral targets for renewable electricity (RES-E), renewable heat (RES-H) and renewable transport (RES-T), see Table 1.
Earlier in the year, a report issued by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) estimated that the contribution of renewable energy to the country’s energy mix would be approximately 13% by 2020, but was continuing to increase.
However, attendees at the Bioenergy for Climate Action in Transport held this week in Dublin heard that the contribution of renewables to the heat and transport sector actually decreased in 2018.
In a presentation from Teagasc bioenergy specialist Barry Caslin, he outlined that the share of renewable energy in the transport sector decreased from 7.4% in 2017 to 7.2% in 2018.
The figure decreased from 6.7% to 6.5% in the renewable heat sector between 2017 and 2018 respectively.
However, the share of renewable energy in the electricity sector increased 3.1% during the same period, largely driven by wind power generation.
More from this week’s conference to follow.
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