ENVIRONMENTAL campaign groups from Clare are among those calling on the Government to halt the Shannon LNG.
Futureproof Clare joined groups including Love Leitrim, Future Generations Kerry, Extinction Rebellion Ireland and Slí Eile in protesting outside the Dáil on Wednesday where they delivered an open letter to the Government calling on them to ban the LNG.
In the past two weeks, the High Court overturned a decision by An Bord Pleanála, refusing permission for the proposed gas terminal. Shannon LNG wants to construct a power plant, battery energy storage system and a re-gasification unit, on a 630-acre site between Tarbert and Ballylongford.
Last September, the planning board ruled that it would be inappropriate to permit such a development, pending the completion of an ongoing review of energy supply. An Bord Pleanála said the project was “contrary to Government policy and therefore contrary to the proper planning and development of the area”.
Emanuela Ferrari of Futureproof Clare said, “Minister Ryan removed the ban on the premise of needing a ‘strategic reserve’. He said it would be ‘State-Led’, which just means a commercial terminal that is regulated by the state. Eamon Ryan admitted himself in the Sunday Business post last week that LNG is unsuitable for storage, due to boil-off gas. He basically admits that LNG constantly needs to feed gas into the system and therefore cannot be used as a ‘Strategic reserve’. Despite this, he says at the end of this article that he would still like to get An Bord Pleanála to apply conditions to make it a ‘strategic reserve’. We are worried that the government is using this crisis to promote their own ‘state-led’ LNG terminal”.
Clare based architect, Melína Sharp commented, “The Irish government have a policy to build as many data centers as big tech companies want. Ireland is becoming a carbon haven for these companies. They are expected to take more than 30% of our electricity grid by 2030. And when they go through planning their emissions seem to go through the Emissions trading scheme, so they are pretty much written off so they say ‘that’s fine’ when in reality this pollution is occurring here and these data centers each have the emissions of a large town like Kilkenny. This is driving the construction of new gas power plants, some of which are powering ‘islanded’ data centers and are actually just built for the sole purpose of powering a data center”.
Scariff based activist, Sinéad Sheehan stated, “I believe that we have the power to stop this. We had the ban in 2021, it was the people who made that happen by getting out on the street. The climate crisis is worsening with every year, people will not accept this and all government parties have a responsibility to live up to their promise, but especially the greens and minister for energy Eamon Ryan, this is your policy. Our demands are clear and we will not accept anything less”.
