Environmental campaigners today attacked the Government’s record on combating climate change, claiming it was making paltry progress in promoting renewable energy.

On the first anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, Friends of the Earth Ireland said the country was only half way to its commitments to generate 12% of electricity from green sources.

“The year since the Kyoto Protocol came into effect has seen no progress in Ireland on tackling climate change,” FoE director Oisín Coghlan said.

“The increase in Ireland’s greenhouse gas pollution is running at twice the level allowed under Kyoto while Government plans are running on empty.”

FoE said that the Government’s own consultants have predicted that without new policies Ireland’s carbon emissions will continue to rise, yet a review of the existing climate change strategy begun in 2002 has not even published a report.

“All we have seen in the last year was the opening of two peat fire power stations. Peat is the most climate changing of all fossil fuels,” Mr Coghlan warned.

FoE said that a Government green paper on sustainable energy promised that 12% of electricity needs would be met by renewable sources by 2005, but that figures from Sustainable Energy Ireland showed we had only reached 5.2% by 2004, not even half of the target.

Mr Coghlan warned the issue would dominate the headlines in the coming years and said: “We cannot cross our fingers and hope it will go away.”

He urged the Government to adopt the same innovative mix of social partnership, investment in education and government incentives to promote eco-friendly activity.