{"id":186182,"date":"2025-11-18T00:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T00:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186182\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T00:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T00:18:09","slug":"solar-panel-grants-to-be-maintained-as-minister-orders-reversal-of-planned-cuts-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186182\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar panel grants to be maintained as minister orders reversal of planned cuts \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Planned cuts to grants for solar panels have been reversed, with Minister for Climate<\/a> Darragh O\u2019Brien<\/a> saying he wanted to continue driving the \u201crooftop revolution\u201d. <\/p>\n

Households can get a grant of \u20ac1,800 from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland to install rooftop panels but this was due to begin reducing by \u20ac300 a year from January 1st. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien said on Monday he had given instructions for the grant not to be touched. <\/p>\n

He said 155,000 homes, farms and businesses now had rooftop panels and he wanted to keep the momentum going. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have responded to the grants. They work and they won\u2019t be reduced,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSolar\u2019s flying and we need to keep going.\u201d <\/p>\n

Solar power<\/a> has increased dramatically in the last three years and there is now two gigawatts worth of electricity generation capacity on rooftops and in large-scale solar parks. <\/p>\n

That compares to five gigawatts of wind turbines that have taken three decades to build up. <\/p>\n

Despite progress in clean electricity, however, the Minister said Ireland would not meet its target of having 80 per cent of all electricity produced by renewables by 2030. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be close and I see us hitting that target in the early 2030s,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0How can I get my EV running on solar energy?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"MinisterMinister for Climate Darragh O\u2019Brien. Photograph: Conor \u00d3’Mear\u00e1in\/Collins Photo Agency <\/p>\n

The country will not meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51 per cent by 2030 either, but he said that would also happen within a few years of the deadline. <\/p>\n

New \u2018carbon budgets\u2019 and \u2018sectoral emission ceilings\u2019 are due to be drawn up by the end of this year to set limits on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions each sector of society and the economy can produce from 2026-2030. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien said that deadline would not be met and it was expected the work would be complete and brought to Government early next year. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien spoke in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil where he is attending the Cop30 climate summit<\/a>. <\/p>\n

He said Ireland was supporting the push by a growing number of countries to agree a \u2018roadmap\u2019 for removing fossil fuels from use across the world. <\/p>\n

At Cop28 in Dubai, countries agreed to \u201ctransition away\u201d from fossil fuels but no targets were set and little progress has been made.<\/p>\n

He said a roadmap would need to be a \u201cto do list\u201d with practical guidance on how to achieve the Cop28 goal but he said there was pushback against it. <\/p>\n

The issue is one of the tricky issues the summit is left to resolve before its scheduled conclusion on Friday. <\/p>\n

In the dispute between Turkey and Australia over the hosting of Cop31, Mr O\u2019Brien said Ireland was supporting the latter because of the focus Australia would bring on the plight of small island states in the Pacific. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Let the sun shine: solar is fast becoming the world\u2019s new energy superpowerOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planned cuts to grants for solar panels have been reversed, with Minister for Climate Darragh O\u2019Brien saying he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,442,47570,2914,18,19,17,8456],"class_list":{"0":"post-186182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-cop30","11":"tag-darragh-o-brien","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-solar-power"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115567834667505093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}