{"id":493688,"date":"2026-05-20T06:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/493688\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T06:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:50:09","slug":"more-than-700000-carbon-credits-purchased-by-state-cancelled-last-year-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/493688\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 700,000 carbon credits purchased by State cancelled last year \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 700,000 carbon credits<\/a> purchased by the State over recent years as part of Ireland\u2019s initiatives to compensate for greenhouse gases were later determined to be without value and written off.<\/p>\n

In a briefing document to the D\u00e1il<\/a> Public Accounts Committee<\/a> (PAC) this week, the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment<\/a> said Ireland had purchased several million of various forms of carbon credits since the country signed up to the Kyoto protocols.<\/p>\n

However, the department said the European Union<\/a> effort sharing decision framework in this area \u201cplaced certain restrictions on the types of carbon credits that could be applied by member states\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis resulted in Ireland being unable to use 702,000 of its previously purchased carbon credits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The briefing document said the State\u2019s carbon fund, which had been established under the Carbon Fund Act 2007 to record carbon credit transactions related to Ireland\u2019s adoption of emission targets under the Kyoto protocols, had been dormant since 2022. It said the fund had no assets other than 702,000 unusable carbon credits with a nil value.<\/p>\n

The briefing document said the 702,000 carbon credits had been cancelled in April 2025. As a result, \u201cthe nominal assets have now been eliminated, and the carbon fund is effectively dormant,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n

The chairman of the PAC, John Brady<\/a> of Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a>, said on Tuesday the State had spent well over \u20ac100 million on carbon credits since 2007 to meet emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith such a level of investment, it is deeply concerning that changes to regulations meant that the State was not able to use 702,000 carbon credits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0More than half of Irish buildings likely to still rely on fossil fuels in 2050 \u2013 SEAIOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The department did not say on Tuesday the amount it had cost originally to purchase the cancelled credits.<\/p>\n

In a statement, it said the carbon fund had been dormant since 2022 with no assets other than 702,000 unusable credits with a nil value which had since been cancelled. \u201cThey were nil value and cancelled as they cannot be used towards compliance under the EU Effort Sharing Regulation, which sets member states\u2019 national emissions reductions targets out to 2030, and are not valid for use under the framework of the Paris Agreement.\u201d <\/p>\n

The department briefing document said that between 2008 and 2012 the State obtained just over nine million carbon credits. These included a direct purchase of 5.26 million credits on the international market by the National Treasury Management Agency<\/a> (NTMA) at a cost of nearly \u20ac90 million.<\/p>\n

The department said that between 2013 and 2020, for compliance under the EU\u2019s Effort Sharing Decision framework, Ireland used both carbon credits and what were known as annual emission allocations (AEAs) which could be bought from other EU countries which had surpluses.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Opinion: arbon credits: The dark heart of the climate \u2018solution\u2019 that simply does not workOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the period 2019-2021, the NTMA purchased almost 2.95 million certified credits at a cost of \u20ac2.1 million. As AEAs may only be obtained directly from other EU member states, the department, following government approval, entered negotiations to purchase AEAs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIreland entered a bilateral agreement with Slovakia to obtain all required AEAs. In early 2023, 4.15 million AEA units were purchased at a cost of \u20ac2.9 million for retrospective compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 700,000 carbon credits purchased by the State over recent years as part of Ireland\u2019s initiatives to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[140929,2860,442,4767,138384,18,440,2219,19,17,69818,101866,17419,133,47],"class_list":["post-493688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-carbon-tax","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-dail-eireann","tag-department-of-climate-energy-and-the-environment","tag-eire","tag-environment","tag-european-union","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-john-brady","tag-national-treasury-management-agency","tag-public-accounts-committee","tag-science","tag-sinn-fein"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116605578554159939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493688","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=493688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}