Retrofitted homes will keep Ireland's residential sector within its carbon budget but petrol and diesel vehicles mean the transport sector is missing climate targets.
That’s according to a mid-year Energy review by the Sustainable Energy Authority.
The SEAI says demand for gas and oil for home heating fell in the six months up to the end of June and the big drop was in natural gas emissions; they fell by 9%.
In the transport sector it estimates that total emissions fell by 2% in the first half of 2025.
Demand for road diesel fell by 3.2% but demand for petrol rose by 4%. Deliveries of Jet Kerosene were up by 5% on the same period last year.
Margie McCarthy, SEAI’s Director of Research and Policy Insights said: "We’ve made progress over the last 5 years including the blending of biofuels for our road vehicles, scaling up of solar farms and wind generation, home energy upgrades, and EV roll-out, but these figures highlight that we need to do a lot more, and fast to reach our targets."
The SEAI predicts that when Ireland’s first 5-year carbon budget period ends on 31 December, the transport sector will have overshot its emissions target of 54 mega tonnes of CO2 equivalent. It expects emissions will hit 57.7MtCO2eq and that 3.7Mt will have to come out of the 2026-2030 budget
The electricity sector is also expected to go over its carbon budget but by a smaller margin: 0.8MtCO2eq.
This is despite a large increase in the amount electricity imported onto the grid. That was up by 21.9% compared to the first six months of last year.
Imported electricity accounted for 17.1% of the supply to the grid from January to June this year, more than ever before. Emissions from imported electricity are not counted in Ireland.
Utility scale generation from renewable sources was very slightly lower in the first half of this year than in same period in 2024.
Although supply from wind and solar both increased, generation from Hydro dropped by 42%.
Electricity supplied from solar farms was up by 72% on the same period last year and from wind by just 0.1%.
The SEAI does not count electricity from micro-generation, so supply from roof top solar or from domestic wind turbines is not included in the review.
