On the climate science point of view, the drumbeat has become so loud that we are almost tuning it out now. However, if we think about the extreme events we have witnessed in the past two or three years here in Europe, never mind more widely around the world, they are extraordinary in that they are devastating in localised areas. The situation right now in Spain coming into the summer is extremely serious in terms of food production and the extending multi-year drought conditions they are now looking at. We used to have a view of climate risk that comfortably placed it at least ten years or 20 years away.
It is now, as it were, at the gates. The problem is this old turning-the-tanker analogy. It is going to get worse before it gets better. That is already the position. No matter what we do, we are going to be subject to significantly more severe climate impacts. Notwithstanding what I mentioned about the extreme events and temperatures in the recent years, that was against a backdrop where the natural variability of the global system was towards cooler temperatures. There is natural variability in the climate system. The natural tendency has been towards cooler temperatures in the last few years. We are now seeing the re-emergence of so-called El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean. The natural variability is, therefore, returning to higher than average rather than lower than average.
The likelihood is, and this was reflected in the world meteorological assessment, that there is a better than two thirds chance that within the next five years we will see a full year of global average temperatures above more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That figure of 1.5°C is not a magic number. There is not some switch that suddenly goes on. In terms of our trajectory, however, that is really soon. That does not mean we failed in the context of the Paris objective, which is about the underlying trend; it is about a 30-year average. It absolutely means that we are currently losing the fight collectively and globally, however. Ireland cannot fix that on its own but it can play its own part. I am trying to speak to the Deputy's question about balancing risks.
As I said, it was a simpler world when we said that there were short-term risks and long-terms risks and that we would do the things we needed to do in the short term in the context of the short-term risks and then, on the back burner, on a slower timescale, we would deal with the longer term risks. However, those timescales are now collapsing on top of each other and are no longer cleanly separated.
I completely and genuinely respect the work this committee continues to do. It is an unenviable task making these judgments and risk assessments and explaining those, particularly when just because something bad happens, that does not mean it has gotten the risk assessment wrong. The point of risk assessment is that bad things may still happen. We can put in place certain mitigation measures but we can never completely mitigate away all risk. Therefore, bad things may still happen. In the political sphere, there will be a tendency for fingers to be pointed and for people to say, "Oh, you got it wrong." The committee can say, "No, we did the risk assessment and, unfortunately, luck was not on our side." As I said, however, we venture into this area of consequences when we are relying on luck being on our side. We really do not want to do that.
I am really saying that in balancing climate risk versus near-term security-of-supply risk, some people talk about an energy trilemma. I do not talk about an energy trilemma. I talk about an energy needs hierarchy. There are three axes to our energy situation, which are security, cost and sustainability. They are not three equal things that we have to balance against each other, however. Sustainability trumps everything. If we do not have a liveable climate, it does not matter how secure the supply of natural gas and oil is. Therefore, at the top of the hierarchy is sustainability; that trumps everything else. After that is security. We definitely want the most secure access to energy we can possibly have. After that comes cost. Other things being equal, if we have multiple ways of meeting the sustainability goals and multiple ways of meeting the security thresholds, then, of course, we want the least-cost option. However, it is the last thing in the hierarchy. They are not three equal things that we balance all the time. In doing these risk assessments, we have to bring forward the risk part of climate. The sustainability really has to come into sharper focus. Of course, the committee must manage the near-term risks as best it can, and it is unenviable. In the context of all the things I said about the difficult choices, LNG, gas storage, etc., none of them is perfect.
It will be a complicated mix and difficult judgments will need to be made in that risk assessment.
The climate is completely unforgiving. Whatever we thought about 39°C in London one day last summer, it was an exception last year. It will not be an exception moving forward. Thankfully, Ireland did not experience that last year, but that was just luck. Our turn will come around and we need to do more on adaptation. However, there is a level of climate impact at which adaptation is impossible. Ireland can take credit. We have genuinely world-leading climate legislation. We have a world-leading framework of governance. It is not yet delivering. A lot of stuff still needs to be done and reinforced around that but Ireland can take credit, as a small player, for trying to move the dial on this. That is our best means of ensuring our future security, prosperity and all those things. We are on the right path. Fossil fuels must play a declining role. Difficult judgments must be made about how to make that decline as rapid as possible. I am not gainsaying that. We must keep in mind that the overarching ambition is to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. We must do our best to cut off at the start anything that introduces pressure in the opposite direction, such as a new fossil fuel resource being exploited domestically or a new import route for fossil fuels, and anything that introduces forces into the Irish political and social system that push us subtly and sometimes not so subtly in the opposite direction rather than waiting until they are fully grown and undermining the other measures we are trying to take.
Data centres were mentioned explicitly. Until we reach this wonderful state of 100% decarbonisation, all increase in our energy consumption will lead to higher emissions. If we are not at zero emissions from our energy, increased energy consumption will lead to increased emissions. That is the way it works. Therefore, we need to be extraordinarily alert to managing down our energy consumption as much as possible. That means taking efficiency measures wherever possible. We need to look at things we think of as efficiency such as building retrofits, which is an efficiency in itself, and moving to heat pumps, which are very efficient. We talk about coefficient performance rather than efficiency measures. There is more than one from heat pumps. We need to look at industrial consumption and be more aggressive in acting on the consumption of fossil fuels in industry and in supporting industry by investing in indigenous industry and industry supported by foreign direct investment. There are a relatively small number of industrial concerns. There is one huge one in particular that is currently heavily reliant on the direct use of fossil fuels. It is in our national interest to support them in progressing their journey off fossil fuels and substituting as rapidly as possible.
This has never been done. There have been transformations in our energy supply before but they have always been in a context of adding rather than substituting, that is, in increasing our total energy consumption. When we went from using animals to using coal, we dramatically increased our energy use. When we went from coal to oil, that dramatically increased it, and then we went from oil to gas. All of these were completely different kinds of scenarios.
This is the test. The test for us here in Ireland, and it is the test for global humanity, is to do this for the first time ever but we only get one shot at it. We really have to throw everything we have at this - all the political, social and societal attention we can muster. It is impossible and, as I said in a different context, we will not do too much. We are far too late in the game now that we will invest too much in this transformation. Managing our demand for energy as frugally as possible in the coming years, and certainly for the next 20 years, has to be part of difficult political and societal conversations.
