{"id":298963,"date":"2025-12-04T17:41:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T17:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/298963\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T17:41:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T17:41:16","slug":"ireland-second-highest-in-eu-for-greenhouse-gas-emissions-per-person-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/298963\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland second highest in EU for greenhouse gas emissions per person \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland had the second highest greenhouse gas emissions per person in the European Union<\/a>, latest comparisons show. <\/p>\n

Emissions of carbon dioxide from oil, gas and coal, together with emissions of methane from agriculture, came to 10.4 tonnes per head of population in 2023. <\/p>\n

That was well above the EU average of 6.9 tonnes. Only Luxembourg had higher at 11.8 tonnes per person. Malta had the lowest at 4.1 tonnes. <\/p>\n

Ireland was also far removed from the EU average for forestry<\/a> cover, with just 11.6 per cent of the total land in forest. <\/p>\n

That was the third lowest, well below the EU average of 38.8 per cent and far less than the most-forested country, Finland, which is 66.2 per cent covered in trees. <\/p>\n

Organic farming was also below average, taking place on just 3.6 per cent of the total farming land, the third lowest in the EU. <\/p>\n

Austria had the most, with 25 per cent of its agricultural land farmed organically. <\/p>\n

The figures come from the Central Statistics Office<\/a> (CSO), which is stepping up its release of environmental information to track how Ireland is performing domestically over time and in comparison with EU neighbours and the wider world. <\/p>\n

The country\u2019s total greenhouse gas emissions were 53.8 million tonnes last year, a 2 per cent reduction on 2023. <\/p>\n

However, if the emissions of airlines based here, including Ryanair<\/a>, are taken into account then the figure rises to 72.9 million tonnes. <\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s emissions fell by 5.4 per cent compared to the 1990-1994 period when international agreements on climate<\/a> action came into effect. <\/p>\n

That is a slower reduction than the EU as a whole, which reduced emissions by 18 per cent over the same period. <\/p>\n

Globally, the picture is very mixed. <\/p>\n

China<\/a>\u2019s emissions increased by 211 per cent over the period.<\/p>\n

Although the country is now the world\u2019s largest emitter, accounting for 26 per cent of the world\u2019s total, the per-head-of-population figure is around the same as Ireland\u2019s. <\/p>\n

The influence of agriculture on Ireland\u2019s environment and emissions is clear from the CSO figures. <\/p>\n

Ireland had 6.4 million cattle at the end of last year, the third biggest herd in the EU, as well as 3.6 million sheep and 1.5 million pigs. <\/p>\n

Almost 61 per cent of all land in the country is in grassland, used for pasture for farming. <\/p>\n

Farming and forestry combined were responsible for 38 per cent of the country\u2019s total greenhouse gas emissions. <\/p>\n

The quality of drinking water, cleanliness of wastewater and condition of bathing waters improved over time, but the state of rivers and lakes declined. <\/p>\n

In the 1980s, 27 per cent of rivers and streams had high water quality, but that fell to 15 per cent by last year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland had the second highest greenhouse gas emissions per person in the European Union, latest comparisons show. Emissions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[12015,891,556,1397,935,15751,2122,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-298963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-central-statistics-office","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-european-union","tag-forestry","tag-ryanair","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}