Half seems kind of reasonable. If you were told that you had to cut, say, your chocolate consumption by half, rather than cutting it out altogether, you’d probably breathe something of a sigh of relief. And then unwrap a Toblerone.
With carbon emissions, something similar has happened in Ireland. We all know that we have to essentially eliminate carbon emissions by the middle of this century or risk landing ourselves with an uninhabitable world, but by setting out an initial target for the transport sector of a 50 per cent cut by 2030, the Government seemed to be giving itself a reasonable target.
Equally, this target was promulgated at a time when the sales of electric vehicles seemed to be storming unstoppably ahead, and we were in the midst of post-Covid can-do euphoria.
How are we doing, though? Well, not great … According to the latest Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report there was just a 1.2 per cent decrease in transport emissions during 2024, following increases of 6 per cent in both 2021 and 2022, and 0.3 per cent in 2023. The EPA’s current projection is for an overall decrease of just 8.7 per cent by 2030 under its With Existing Measures scenario. That leaves a fairly massive 41.3 per cent reduction still sitting on the table.
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The picture is somewhat better when additional measures are applied, with a projected decrease of 20.9 per cent. This assumes 640,000 electric vehicles will be on the road, biofuel blends replacing petrol (10 per cent) and diesel (20 per cent) and a significant reduction in total vehicle kilometres to be achieved by behavioural and sustainable transport measures, all by 2030.
However, even these additional measures are on rocky ground. Getting 640,000 electric cars on the road by 2030 might just be an impossible task at this point, even if it seems like a more reasonable number than the original target of almost one million.
Currently, there are 103,320 electric cars (or 191,000 if you include electric commercial vehicles) on the Republic’s roads, according to history checking service Cartell. We generally buy around 120,000 new passenger cars each year in the State, and even with the substantial 30 per cent growth in electric car sales so far in 2025 (following a disastrous 2024, when EV sales actually fell by 24 per cent) electric models currently only account for 17 per cent of total sales. Even assuming that market share increases between now and 2030, we’re unlikely to add another 400,000-odd EVs by then.
So, what can we do? Essentially, Irish car buyers are going to have to change their buying habits, and dramatically so if we’re to get anywhere near the emissions cuts we need. According to James Nix, vehicles policy manager at eco think tank Transport & Environment (T&E): “Transport is the second highest emitting sector in Ireland and cars are responsible for most of this. One-sixth of new cars sold are fully electric, but we’re seeing other northern European countries doing far better. Ireland lags behind most of the EU for public charging but it can rapidly catch up by installing more fast chargers. Slower destination chargers would work well at tourism destinations and sporting facilities that are not well served by public transport.
“We’re also more inclined to go for SUVs than many European countries, with 60 per cent of new sales in 2023, compared to an EU average of 52 per cent. Bigger cars burn much more petrol and diesel, and bigger electric models require more electricity. Large SUVs also take up more space, which hampers, and sometimes endangers, pedestrians and cyclists. We need tax policy to support the move to smaller, more efficient vehicles, including smaller, more affordable EVs.”
While Government carrots have helped to improve electric car sales, Nix says it’s now time for more in the way of stick … “Increasing VRT on the heaviest newly sold SUVs was an option outlined by the interdepartmental Tax Strategy Group in July. It deserves clear all-party support as discussions on Budget 2026 intensify. Councils can also start to vary car-parking charges by vehicle weight, as we’re increasingly seeing in France and Germany,” said Nix.
Will such measures be adopted? A spokesperson for the Department of Transport told The Irish Times that a longer-term view is being taken, and that improvements in transport emissions were always going to be backloaded, so to speak. “Decarbonisation of the transport sector in Ireland is very challenging. While CAP23 [Climate Action Plan 2023] set out very ambitious measures and targets, it clearly identified that the impact of these interventions would take time, and that abatement would be skewed towards the latter half of the decade” said the spokesperson.
As for ways of improving EV sales, the spokesperson said: “There are currently over 191,000 EVs registered on Irish roads up to the end of August 2025. That number is expected to increase as the price of EVs continues to fall relative to their combustion-engine equivalents. It is expected that as manufacturers increasingly ramp up EV production, upfront costs will become more comparable to traditional combustion-engine cars within the next number of years.”
The department says ambitions need to be kept high in order to make the transition successful but equally admits that “increased levels of wider social and economic activity and continued population growth could continue to undermine the level at which our actions and policies are delivering emissions savings”.
While the electric side of emissions reductions should pick up, given time, Transport & Environment’s Cian Delaney says that expecting biofuels to play a significant role in emissions reductions is playing with fire: “Biofuels cannot play a major role in decarbonising our cars and lorries. Compared to electrification, they are an incredibly inefficient fuel alternative and can actually do more harm than good.
“Biofuels that are made from waste products, like hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), are presented as green, but they cannot be produced sustainably in the amounts needed for even a fraction of our fleets. Fraud is a major concern. Exports from Asia of used cooking oil and palm oil byproducts, like palm oil mill effluent (POME), two key ingredients for HVO, are significantly larger than what is considered feasible to collect. It’s a major red flag.”
A case of lots done, more to do? Yes, but time is not on our side.
