Dr Cathal FitzGerald
SECRETARIAT PAPER
No.41 March 2026
Introduction¹
There has been much progress made on Ireland’s energy transition. Harmful emissions have
fallen, there are record levels of power being generated from renewable sources, and home solar
energy adoption and retrofitting are happening at scale and at pace. Key structural, institutional,
and legislative changes have progressed, and significant capital investment continues.
However, Ireland’s energy transition is not happening fast enough. Additional policy action
and investments on numerous fronts are required, and any steps that can accelerate
decarbonisation must be taken. This discussion paper argues that one of those steps should be
a greater emphasis in the policy system on understanding, confronting, and resolving key trade-offs.
Policy trade-offs arise when the pursuit of one policy objective or outcome involves sacrificing
or negatively impacting the achievement of another. Failure to resolve trade-offs, when setting
or progressing policy, increases ambiguity, uncertainty, incoherence, risk, and other negative
effects which harm progress. In contrast, addressing trade-offs can accelerate progress.
In the absence of agreed non-negotiables, a trade-off between sustainable, secure, and
affordable/competitive supply (the trilemma) sits at the heart of Ireland’s energy transition. A
successful transition depends on an energy system which has a cumulative emissions trajectory
towards national targets, is secure, is reliable, is viable, is affordable, is competitive, and is
socio-politically acceptable. An evidence-based pathway to achieving Ireland’s ambitious energy
targets which reconciles national environmental, social, and economic objectives has never
been settled on.
The consequences of this are clear, not just from the frustrating pace of progress and missed
targets, but also from the gaps in our knowledge and strategy for power sector decarbonisation,
offshore renewable energy, energy security, and digitalisation. There is a resulting absence of
clarity and certainty which is harmful for policy, progress, and narrative. Policy-makers may know
what to do, but not how to do it in a way which simultaneously achieves multiple, valid national
objectives.
A secondary impact of not fully reconciling trade-offs has been the raising of public
expectations via a narrative of cheap, reliable renewable electricity, where Ireland becomes a
net exporter of energy. The transition narrative often looks to the longer-term, to the horizon
where trade-offs have been resolved. In the near-to medium term, electricity is likely to be more
expensive, reliability is uncertain and may worsen, and the export model is incomplete. Any shift
in the narrative must be carefully managed to maintain Ireland’s currently strong buy-in and
legitimacy for action.
Finally, Ireland must be ever-vigilant for ‘the obstructionist wolf in pragmatist sheep’s clothing’,
while also encouraging and supporting constructive critique which is aimed at progressing
decarbonisation. If key trade-offs can be addressed and are seen to be so, this can insert
impetus into the transition and help defeat obstruction and delay. The challenge of doing so
must not be underestimated, and five initial steps are proposed:
- Work hard to better understand transition trade-offs: Complete the important research
underway, and address the knowledge gaps out to 2030 and in the heat and transport
sectors. - Place a new emphasis on feasibility: Move beyond technical readiness and the availability of
measures, to reflect a tetralemma of ensuring sustainability, security, affordability, and
socio-political acceptability; and set out an agreed, credible pathway. - Enhance energy transition modelling: Encapsulate a wider set of considerations and data
which have been deemed important to Ireland e.g. with reference of the National Well-Being
Framework. - Tell a story of transition that isn’t only looking to the horizon: Refresh the energy transition
narrative in light of developments at home and abroad. Ireland needs a story of energy
transition that isn’t told looking 30,000 feet away, to the horizon. It must speak to the lived
experience of individuals, households, firms, and communities today. - Supplement the Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan: Use this new policy architecture to
address unresolved trade-offs in strategic infrastructure delivery more broadly, not only in
the energy transition, and to improve future policy-making and target-setting.
These proposals are expanded upon in this discussion paper. Making progress on these actions,
alongside the many other necessary ones, can bolster the energy transition and help Ireland
realise national environmental, social, and economic objectives.
Chapter 1: The Centrality of Policy Trade-Offs
1.1 Introduction
A policy trade-off is a situation where the pursuit of one policy objective or outcome involves
sacrificing or negatively impacting the achievement of another. Resolving trade-offs has
long been at the heart of policy, politics, and governance, for example reconciling tensions
between liberty and security, economic efficiency and social equality, globalisation and national
sovereignty, and in recent years, economic growth and environmental sustainability (Raworth,
2018; NESC, 2023b; Cahill and FitzGerald, 2023). Everything can’t be had: limitless spend and
low tax; relentless consumption and ecological sustainability; and as the saying goes, ‘to govern
is to choose’. Reframing policy trade-offs has been core to the work of the National Economic
and Social Council (NESC) since its establishment in 1973 (NESC, 2025d).
The trade-off framing is used in this discussion paper, not to advocate for it or because it is
in some way optimal, but to illustrate the extent to which critical decisions have or have not
been taken by the policy system, and non-negotiables agreed. There are drawbacks to the
‘trade-off’ framing. For example, the framing of policy as a trade-off between social, economic,
and environmental factors is viewed by some as not being objective, but rather as having ‘a
structural imperative for economic growth at its core’ (Jackson, 2024).
One enhancement of the trade-off framing is the synergy concept, whereby goals are
complementary rather than in opposition (Blair, 2017). Examples of synergies include active
travel policy which reduces emissions while also improving health outcomes, and retrofitting
initiatives which reduce emissions while also helping alleviate energy poverty. In the longer
term, energy independence can enhance national resilience and competitiveness. The failure
to leverage synergies can occur when siloed policy-making fails to identify synergies, or where
policy solutions that maximise synergies are further away from existing practice. At the same
time, a synergistic outcome in the near term to Ireland’s energy trilemma seems implausible, and
caution is always needed in regard to win-win narratives i.e. ‘we would have done this anyway
regardless of cost, emissions, or security concerns’. In the longer term, decarbonisation is an
energy security strategy.
One useful example of an alternative to the trade-off framing is an energy-needs hierarchy
frame (McMullin, 2018). This approach argues that energy policy is not a trilemma of relatively
equal sustainability, security, and competitiveness aspirations to be balanced against each
other, but rather is a strict hierarchy with a rigorous priority order, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy
of human needs. Needs lower in the hierarchy must be satisfied before higher ones can be
attended to. At the bottom of the energy-needs hierarchy is sustainability, above this is
security, with cost of supply at the top. There have been calls for over the years for the policy
system to clearly set out what the order of priorities is, say between sustainability, security, and
competitiveness, as this has significant implications for decisions made and actions (Forfás,
2011; FitzGerald, 2019).
Despite its limitations and the presence of alternatives, the trade-off framing has strong
illustrative power and moreover, remains prominent in policy discourse. The trade-offs facing
policy-makers in any specific area change over time. Since the 1980s, the trade-off between
social, economic, and environmental factors has been a prominent feature of policy discourse,
and the search for an ‘elusive’ resolution is the subject of much of modern day policy making
(Elkington, 2013; Campbell 1996; Carter and Rogers 2008; Jackson, 2024).² At a macro-level,
Ireland has stated national policy objectives for the environment, society, and economy which it
pursues in parallel:
- The national objective for the environment and climate is evident in the legally binding
commitment to reduce emissions by 51 per cent on 2018 levels by 2030, and to become a
climate neutral economy by no later than 2050. A system of carbon budgets and sectoral
ceilings, linked to cumulative emissions and the Paris 1.5 degrees commitment is connected
to this (Government of Ireland, 2021). - National social policy objectives include making Ireland one of the most socially inclusive
States in the EU and reducing the national consistent poverty rate to 2 per cent or less of
the population. This means extending employment opportunities to all who can work,
ensuring work pays, providing income security for older people, supporting families and
reducing child poverty, reducing poverty among people with disabilities, building inclusive
communities, and ensuring that all people have access to quality services (Government of
Ireland, 2020b). - National economic objectives include:
o ‘Growing Ireland’s economy’ through on a strong enterprise base, openness and free
trade, exporting, competitiveness, productivity, and innovation (Government of Ireland,
2025i); and
o Making Ireland the world’s leading location to work, do business, and visit. This involves,
among other things, driving competitiveness, prosperity, and higher standards of living;
cost-effective strategic investment in innovation, productivity, digitalisation,
decarbonisation, and infrastructure; and minimising cost burdens and mitigating the
cost of doing business (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, 2025).
While these objectives are not explicitly set in opposition to each other, the persistent challenge
for policy-makers has been resolving inherent trade-offs between them. Even within the national
objective for the environment, a trade-off is evident as the goal of ‘climate neutrality’ is defined
with reference to a ‘sustainable economy and society’ (Government of Ireland, 2021).³ Another
important trade-off in this context is the intertemporal trade-off. Policy-makers must confront
the trade-off between ‘cost’ now and longer-term benefit (e.g. mitigation investment), and
‘benefit’ now and longer-term cost (e.g. fines related to missing 2030 targets). This issue is most
acute for elected policy-makers. At a more micro level, there currently are live, impactful national
policy trade-offs to be reconciled within and between policy areas, for example: - In infrastructure delivery policy, between individual rights and the common good.
- In land use, between socioeconomic, climate, biodiversity, and water and air quality
objectives.
2 The ‘trade-off’ framing of policy has its critics. See section 2.3 for discussion of this point.
3 Furthermore, as was recently confirmed by the Supreme Court, the Climate Act’s instruction that public bodies must perform their
functions in a manner consistent with the national climate objective, is “in so far as practicable”, thus allowing for competing factors.
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National Economic and Social Council - In social policy between sustainable long-term funding and pension arrangements.
- In technology policy, between innovation and regulation, and utility and privacy; and
between computational power, digitisation, and resource use. - In free trade policy, between economy wide effects, sectoral impact, public health concerns,
international reputation and influence, domestic electoral concerns, and domestic political
stability. - In transport infrastructure and housing policy, between the need for a large number of
workers from abroad required to complete large infrastructure projects, and providing
homes for those workers. - In housing policy, between protections for rental tenants and the need for private
investment.
Many more examples are evident in almost every policy area, of course.
1.2 The Cause and Impact of Unresolved Trade-Offs
The failure to confront policy trade-offs can occur when setting policy and targets, or later
when progressing the policy. In many ways avoiding trade-offs is understandable, and should
not be simply seen as ignorance or negligence. The primary reason may be that successfully
reconciling trade-offs is exceptionally difficult. This is discussed further in chapter 3. In
summary, successfully resolving trade-offs requires the capacity, structures, and time for
comprehensive analysis, and for effective engagement on specific policies and projects
between policy-makers, experts, interest groups, local communities, and politicians. It requires
strong politics and politicians, and legitimacy from the public to act. Vast quantities of data may
be required to begin to understand the trade-offs inherent in any specific policy area. Complex
analytical work must be steered by key actors, may involve contracting external expertise, and
involve extensive stakeholder consultation exercises. The complexity and intensity of contested
issues means translating trade-off analysis into trade-off resolution requires political will and
authority.
Additional reasons for avoiding difficult trade-offs and rushing to outcomes and targets include: - Where the policy issue is particularly pressing (e.g. the climate/biodiversity and housing
emergencies), setting ambitious policy and targets to show determination is rational and to
be expected. There is understandable public expectation. - Moving quickly to ambition and targets can be done to drive ambition and to foster coordinated action.
- Creating a binding system of laws and fines can viewed as a way to compel action, without
having to confront difficult choices. - In complex and contested areas, policy-makers will naturally strive for consensus via winwins in order to make progress as quickly as possible.
- Expediency is an incentive for strategic use of ambiguity, leaving trade-offs unconfronted.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition - For elected policy-makers, the dynamics of political competition encourage the setting of
ambitious policy and targets without first resolving the key trade-offs. They are easier to
ignore where vision does not (need to) extend beyond the electoral cycle. - Policy and targets can emerge from vote-seeking political party manifestoes, where tradeoffs may be of lower concern, and which are then collated in a relatively short and intense
timeframe into a Government programme. - In policy-areas where progress has been difficult over a long period, ambitious policy and
targets might be used to counter systemic cynicism, and any view that progress can’t or
won’t be made. - The often siloed nature of the policy-making system makes reconciling objectives across
areas of Departmental/Agency/Regulator responsibility extremely difficult. - Behavioural factors such as risk/ambiguity aversion, cognitive dissonance, and groupthink
all make trade-offs more difficult to confront.
Whatever the reason or the rationale, the impact of failing to understand, confront, and
reconcile trade-offs can be negative: poor policy and progress. It increases ambiguity,
incoherence, uncertainty, and risk. It can result in short term, more (politically) palatable
decisions, and even ‘placebo policies’ (Mazey and Richardson, 2022). The failure to reconcile
trade-offs can hinder strategic vision, and lead to ‘successful failure’ whereby some output is
delivered, but the core problem is not addressed. Problems can be ‘stored up for the future’,
making subsequent policy decisions even harder. The persistent failure to address problems can
generate disillusionment and cynicism, reduce faith in the policy-making system, and polarise
debate.
In a competitive political and electoral environment, disillusionment and cynicism can be
responded to with increased political ambition and ‘stretch’ targets. The failure to recognise,
tackle, and resolve trade-offs can contribute to cognitive dissonance whereby targets are
adopted, maintained, and repeated despite a strong sense that they are unlikely to be reached.
Stretch targets also emerge in response to the scale of the challenge, side-stepping trade-offs
i.e. focusing on ‘what is needed’ as opposed to ‘what can actually be delivered’. This is where
trade-offs and feasibility interact.
When ambitious stretch targets are adopted, there can be insufficient action to also increase
capacity for what can be delivered i.e. it is not that (all) stretch targets are undeliverable but
rather that targets are stretched without also stretching the policies, capabilities, and measures
required to attain them. While ambitious targets are not of themselves a barrier to delivery, the
setting and restating of targets which have not confronted trade-offs and are more difficult or
unlikely to be achieved, can mitigate against necessary adjustments to policy.
The failure to understand, tackle, and resolve trade-offs ultimately means that policy challenges
are not seen fully and lack a 360-degree lens. It reduces the ability of the policy system to
fully anticipate the complexity of delivery, and when problems do arise, the required whole-ofgovernment capacity, systems, and willingness to engage and respond can be lacking. In short,
it reduces the ability to achieve what needs to be achieved.
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The corollary of the above is that being honest about and reconciling trade-offs is helpful
to policy and progress. Policy-making must consider the broader suite of costs and benefits
across the multiple objectives being pursued in parallel. This can decrease ambiguity,
incoherence, uncertainty, and risk, and result in more medium-to-long-term decisions and more
impactful policies. Giving greater attention to trade-offs can improve policy especially when
a 360-degree, longer-term view is taken which resists status quo bias by considering future
‘winners and losers’ i.e. cathedral thinking (NESC, 2025d).
The successful resolution of trade-offs, coupled with greater, evidence-based risk appetite, can
improve strategic perspective and lead to meaningful successes whereby output is delivered as
the core problem is addressed.
The resulting success in addressing problems can generate confidence and optimism, increase
faith in the policy-making system, and de-escalate polarisation by (re)introducing complexity to
a perceived zero-sum game. Addressing trade-offs reveals the benefits of a policy, but also the
costs which must be mitigated by secondary policy. This can allow political ambition and targets
to be met despite both losers and winners potentially emerging from confronting the trade-offs.
Overall, understanding, confronting, and reconciling trade-offs will contribute to the foundations
of sound policy by providing evidence, feasibility, and legitimacy, and give politicians and
advocates a truly robust policy to present to citizens and voters.
1.3 Evidence, Legitimacy, and Feasibility
In the Policy Handbook: A ‘Real World’ Guide to Policy Development, Ireland’s policy system has
adopted a three-pillar framework as the touchstone for the development of policy in Ireland
(Government of Ireland, 2025h). The three pillars are: - Data and evidence;
- Legitimacy; and
- Feasibility and implementation.
Combined, this tripod is to provide the base for good policy making in the Irish context.
Reconciling trade-offs can help build each pillar, though as will be discussed later, it is a task in
its own right. In the first instance, understanding the trade-offs necessitates the gathering and
analysis of sufficient data and evidence. The policy system must have the time, resources, and
expertise to complete this work, as it is a key input to the analysis, appraisal, and the weighingup of competing objectives.
Ireland’s sophisticated and impactful energy transition modelling exercises play an important
role in energy transition policy. However, as will be described later in this discussion paper, even
beginning to understand the trade-offs inherent in decarbonising the power sector will involve
an entirely separate process to generate, analyse, and weigh up-over 2,000 data points. The
policy system needs the capacity to complete this type of extensive work in a timely manner as
many of the strategic projects are urgent. At the same time, nothing – including the gathering
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
and analysis of data – should delay or obstruct vital action. Further, addressing trade-offs must
be more than a technocratic, data-focused endeavor. Policy-makers may have sufficient data to
underpin action, yet delivery may not always follow.
A second consideration then is how addressing trade-offs can help to build, maintain, and grow
legitimacy and the necessary public buy-in, as well as true political buy-in. Evidence and facts
alone do not necessarily win minds.
Debating and negotiating trade-offs, what we do and do not need, what we can and cannot do
etc. in an open and inclusive manner, with trusted intermediaries and messengers, can secure
a mandate and buy-in from the public for strategic infrastructure and related policies (NESC,
2014). The centrality of legitimacy and narrative to the energy transition, and the present
challenges to it, are detailed in chapter 3.
To complete the tripod of good policy as called for in the Handbook, resolving trade-offs
contributes to the feasibility of a policy or project. Confronting trade-offs can provide
clarity, make priorities explicit, support delivery, produce realistic expectations, and reduce
assessments of implementation failure. It can highlight decisions that might solve one issue, but
cause others, and inform further policy to mitigate possible negative effects.
Resolving trade-offs should be seen as part of developing good policy and assessing options,
and feasibility is a pressing concern in relation to the energy transition. Ireland’s Policy Handbook
highlights some of the issues (Government of Ireland, 2025h; 21-23).
Complex energy transition policy issues are sometimes encapsulated in relatively simple
statements of abstract policy objectives, such as what if 80 per cent of Ireland’s electricity
came from renewable sources by 2030? What if Ireland had five gigawatts of offshore wind
capacity by 2030? What if Ireland achieved a climate-resilient, biodiversity-rich, environmentally
sustainable, and climate-neutral economy by 2050? As the Handbook explains, while this is
legitimate, good policy demands that such objectives are accompanied by some assessment
of the feasibility of how these objectives will be achieved. ‘Failure to associate valid policy
objectives with an informed consideration of how these objectives might be delivered often
results in unrealistic expectations. This, in turn, gives rise to assessments of ‘implementation’
failure, which, in turn, call into question the policy and delivery capacity of the civil service’ (ibid:,
21).
Therefore, the Handbook calls for work to, among other things, fully understand the challenges
and trade-offs associated with implementing the policy, together with the capacity and costs
involved, the benefits to be derived, and the implementation timeline. This is a significant
challenge in the case of establishing the feasibility of energy transition policy targets.
Deep analysis and engagement will ‘allow all sides the time and space to elaborate on the
complexities of policy choices, potential trade-offs, and what data and evidence is or isn’t telling
us’. Those who will implement the policy should, the Handbook indicates, sign-off on choices
that are made about trade-offs- ‘to help us translate and tailor policies into concrete outcomes
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we must engage with everybody involved in the delivery process’. Again this is a challenge in
energy transition policy (and others) where funding and delivery is by private sectors actors,
who may be unknown ex ante.
The Handbook calls for feasibility to also be built via processes that will ensure the policy
achieves the desired policy solution. For example, the benefits of generating renewable
electricity will only accrue if the grid has the capacity to take and deliver it to homes and
businesses.
Overall, the Handbook states, a well-designed policy should be feasible, based on a proper
assessment. This assessment will ‘help to inform the choice of policy instruments and to identify
and mitigate against the inevitable risks that will be faced in translating policy choices into
practice’. As will be discussed in chapter 3, the excellent energy transition modelling used by the
policy system does not encapsulate the full range of trade-offs which the policy system must
tackle. Further, in that modelling, feasibility is a function of the technical readiness, as opposed
to whether ‘it can be done’ or socio-political acceptance.
1.4 Conclusion
Resolving situations where the pursuit of one objective involves damage to another has long
been central to the work of policy-makers. The failure to reconcile such trade-offs is harmful to
policy and progress, while resolving them can bolster the chances of success. Side-stepping
trade-offs often results in stretch targets being adopted and maintained despite a sense that
they are unlikely to be reached, a form of cognitive dissonance which harms credibility and
delays policy course-correction.
Ireland rightly has valid national objectives for the environment, society, and the economy that
policy-makers must pursue. Today, the elusive search for a resolution to associated trade-offs
looms large in policy-making. Ireland’s Policy Handbook advocates for the ‘tripod of good policy’:
evidence, legitimacy, and feasibility. Negotiating trade-offs in an inclusive manner based on
extensive and comprehensive analysis builds the legitimacy and public buy-in necessary for
strategic infrastructure.
Finally, confronting trade-offs can support feasibility by providing clarity and realistic
expectations, preventing the implementation failure that arises when abstract objectives are not
matched by delivery capacity. It can also identify and lead to more ‘policy package’ approaches,
rather than considering policies, trade-offs, and impacts in isolation.
The next chapter details the significant progress made on Ireland’s energy transition. Such
progress, considered on its own, suggests that Ireland’s overarching policy is underpinned by
sufficient evidence, legitimacy, and feasibility, and has negotiated trade-offs. It suggests that
transition policy has avoided the implementation failure that arises when objectives, analysis,
and modelling and are not matched by feasibility and the capacity to deliver. However, the
chapter goes on to detail some of the challenges surrounding decarbonisation which suggest
otherwise, and sets out some conclusions we might draw.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Chapter 2: Energy Transition Trade-Offs
2.1 Introduction
Ireland’s energy transition – the decarbonisation of Ireland’s power, heat, and transport systems
– must happen and must be successful. The NESC Council has stated its collective and resolute
support for this energy transition on many occasions (see NESC 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2023a,
2025a, and 2025c for examples).
The core elements of Ireland’s approach to achieving its decarbonisation goals include: - Communicating the climate and biodiversity emergency message.
- The work of key, respected institutions as the Climate Change Advisory Council, the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, various
research and innovation centres, and others. - Fact-based reporting of the global and national impacts of harmful emissions, and
reiterating the cost of inaction. - EU and national commitments (e.g. 51 per cent reduction in GHG emissions by 2030;
climate neutrality by 2050). - The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act which makes legally binding
commitments. - Increasing the share of electricity generated from renewable sources to 80 per cent in
2030, including a total of 22 GW of clean energy infrastructure generating capacity. - A renewable heat target of 24 per cent in 2030.
- A renewable energy share in the transport sector of 29 percent by 2030.
- The rolling up of these renewable electricity, heat, and transport targets into an overall
target. - Undertaking modelling and analysis to underpin an evidence-based approach to
decarbonization. - Statutorily-embedded carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings.
- The linked NDP/NPF with ten investment-backed National Strategic Objectives (including
transition to carbon neutrality, climate resilience). - Delivering annual Climate Action Plans and related strategies, plans, investments, incentives
(e.g. grants and taxation), communication efforts, and demand-side action. - Reiterating the co-benefits of the transition (e.g. in clean energy: ‘green jobs’; ‘more reliable
power’; ‘cheaper electricity’; ‘net exporter of energy’, ‘Saudi Arabia of Wind’). - Creating the optimal conditions for the market to develop and deliver the clean energy
infrastructure necessary to meet commitments and targets, including through enterprise
and related policies.
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2.2 Two Sides of the Transition Coin
2.2.1 Encouraging Progress
There has been much progress made on Ireland’s energy transition. Harmful emissions fell by
almost 7 per cent in 2023, and by almost 2 per cent in 2024 (with reductions in emissions
evident in all sectors except the Built Environment sector) leaving emissions now at their lowest
in thirty years (CCAC, 2025). There are now record levels of power from renewable sources on
Ireland’s grid, and home solar energy adoption and retrofitting are happening at scale and at
pace. The proportion of electricity coming from renewable sources has risen from 7 per cent
in 2005, to over 40 per cent in 2024. In 2025, Ireland reached over 5 GW of installed onshore
wind, national solar capacity surpassed 2 GW for the first time, and there are now over 150,000
roof top-solar panels installed across Ireland.
Key structural, institutional, and legislative changes have progressed (e.g. the Marine Area
Regulatory Authority, An Coimisiún Pleanála, and the Planning and Development Act). Also,
record capital investment of €558m has been announced by the State for residential and
community energy upgrade schemes to support the National Retrofit Plan (DCEE, 2025).
Overall, emissions have fallen as the economy and population have grown substantially:
In 2023, Ireland achieved its most substantial single-year emissions reduction on record,
falling by 6.8 per cent. This is clear evidence that our policies are delivering tangible results.
We are successfully demonstrating that a thriving economy and a growing population can
go hand in hand with climate action. Since 1990, we have achieved a more than threefold
increase in national income in real terms and supported population growth of nearly 50 per
cent. This was accompanied by a significant increase in energy use, particularly until the
mid-2000s. The subsequent years continue to post strong growth figures, although now
with far greater efficiency in our energy use – Minister for Climate, Energy and the
Environment statement to the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy, July
2nd 2025 (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2025a).
This progress presents Ireland’s energy transition as an example of successfully understanding,
tackling, and resolving trade-offs. This level of progress suggests that ambiguity, incoherence,
uncertainty, and risk are low enough to facilitate medium-to-long-term decisions and to deliver
impactful policies, whereby output is not only delivered, but the core problem is addressed. All
of which should mean high levels of confidence and optimism, high faith in the policy-making
system, and little polarisation.
2.2.2 Frustrating Delays
Notwithstanding the progress outlined above, the energy transition also illustrates problems
which arise from failing to fully identify and address trade-offs. Ireland is not making progress
quickly enough and our current approach is not on track to deliver all that it needs to or has
targeted (NESC, 2026). Progress must not be dismissed, but it does not equal success. There
is no doubt that implementation lags far behind commitments and immediate goals, with latest
data suggesting:
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition - Ireland missing its 80 per cent renewable electricity target in 2030, reaching 67 per cent in
an ambitious scenario (IEA, 2025a).⁴ - Delivering in the order of 14 GW of renewable electricity generation capacity, not the 22 GW
targeted by 2030 (SEAI, 2025a). - Power system reliability operating outside of standards by a factor of four in 2030 with 12
hours annually where supply can’t meet demand versus a target of 3 hours (EirGrid and
SONI, 2025). - Electricity sector emissions of 5.1 Mt in 2030, exceeding the average 2026-2030 sectoral
emission ceiling of 4 Mt per Year (IEA, 2025a). - At 8 per cent, Ireland ranking lowest in the EU for share of renewable energy used in heating
and cooling (EU average is 27 per cent, Sweden is 69 per cent (Eurostat, 2025). - Transport-related emissions flatlining at 11.5 Mt in 2025, and likely to exceed their sectoral
ceiling, when net reductions are needed (SEAI, 2025a). - Missing the Energy Efficiency Directive target for future energy demand, with measures to
reduce final energy consumption not sufficient to outpace projected growth in energy
consumption (SEAI, 2025b). - Ireland falling behind on targets set in the Clean Air Strategy for 2026 and not yet meeting
air pollution health guidelines from the World Health Organization (EPA, 2024). - Ireland missing the most crucial objective with an expected a 9 per cent reduction in
emissions by 2030 with existing measures and a 23 per cent reduction with additional
measures – ‘falling well short of the legally binding 51 per cent reduction required under the
Climate Act 2021 and Ireland’s EU Effort Sharing Regulation commitments’ (CCAC, 2025:9).⁵
In addition, the Council has concluded that electricity costs are likely to be higher not lower
in the coming years (NESC,2025b). The findings of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Environmental Rights in relation to the Dublin Airport passenger cap, the importation of liquefied
natural gas, prolonging the nitrates derogation, and the cumulative climate impact of new data
centres, suggest that unresolved trade-offs may have stored up problems: ‘economic revenue
must not come at the expense of protecting the environment and human rights…’ (O’Doherty,
2026). Further, Ireland could not stay within the 295 Mt CO₂ eq budget for the period 2020 and
2025, and emitted 305 Mt CO₂ eq of harmful gasses over those five years (CCAC, 2025).
More impetus will be needed to meet the (now even more restrictive) carbon budget of
190 MtCO₂ eq for 2025 to 2030. Reducing emissions by the 115 Mt CO₂ eq required under
legislation over the next five years presents a daunting challenge: - NESC’s recent examination using an economic resilience lens⁶ found that Ireland’s policy is
currently ‘headed into fog and that key actors are not on the same page from a strategic
standpoint’. Among other things, a detailed decarbonisation pathway is required which sets
out the logical, evidence-based staging posts and other parameters of a successful
4 The importation of Guarantee of Origin Certificates into the all-island market by suppliers may be inflating the annual market share of
renewable electricity from its true value to an artificial, higher value.
5 Ireland has the second highest emissions of greenhouse gases per capita in the EU. Note, some ambiguity emerged during this
research around the legally binding nature of the 51 per cent reduction target. There is a view that the legal requirement under the
Act is only that the carbon budgets proposed by the Advisory Council provide for a 51 per cent reduction in emissions, not that the
51 per cent reduction target itself is legally binding.
6 In that NESC research, economic resilience refers to four key aspects of Ireland’s energy transition: enterprise opportunities, the
export of energy, the reliability of power supply, and the cost of energy.
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transition; the progress to be completed by those staging posts; and the roles,
responsibilities and expected outcomes from all those with responsibility for delivering the
various elements of the shared plan. Rather than starting with an end-goal target, the
approach should be to detail a feasible path, from existing renewable power generation
capacity to an agreed midpoint on the way to domestic net zero, and if viable and valuable,
on to surplus production (NESC, 2025b). - NESC’s recent examination of the energy transition using a household resilience perspective
concluded that ‘it is not clear if people’s experience and role in the energy system now and
into the future is fully understood. There is little sense of what a new energy system will
bring people in terms of their wellbeing, their economic and social development, and their
role in it (NESC, 2025a: 2). - NESC’s examination of the energy transition using systems analysis tools and techniques
found that there are currently disparate objectives and constraints placed on the energy
sector and its transition to a future sustainable system, meaning opportunities are being
missed, some elements are ‘falling between stools’, and frictions are being created between
the multiple diverse pathways to a decarbonised future; this confusion leads to uncertainty
among investors, increasing costs, and reduces support among the public as contradictory
messages lead to loss of confidence (NESC, 2026).
Overall, there is evidence that not all of the trade-offs inherent in the energy transition have
been fully understood, confronted, and reconciled.
2.3 Trade-offs and Targets in Energy Transition Policy
As discussed above, the trade-off between social, economic, and environmental factors
has been to the fore in policy discourse internationally for over forty years. The increased
prominence of the sustainability/security/competitiveness energy trilemma has coincided with
global and national developments in climate action ambition. For example: - In 1997, Ireland adopted the Kyoto Protocol and its targets to reduce collective greenhouse
gas emissions by 5.2 per cent (compared to 1990 levels) by the end of 2012. - In 2007, a Government White Paper named the main strands of energy policy as energy
security, competitiveness, and sustainability; and, the EU agreed a greenhouse gas
emissions reduction target of 20 per cent reduction by 2020 (from 1990 levels), targeted a
20 per cent increase in energy efficiency by 2020, and adopted a goal of 20 per cent of
energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020. - In 2009, the EU Renewable Energy Directive set Ireland a legally binding target of meeting
16 per cent of energy demand from renewable sources by 2020. Ireland’s National
Renewable Energy Action Plan NREAP, consistent with the Directive, set targets of 40 per
cent of electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2020, 4 per cent of road
transport fuel consumption from biofuels, and 12 per cent renewable heat by 2020. - In 2012, the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol established a second commitment
period (2013-20), and extended the list of greenhouse gases covered. - In 2015, the Paris Agreement provided a framework for action to limit global temperatures
well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to work to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
These developments, and the adoption of ambitious targets, made the trilemma real for policymakers. While the 2006 White Paper detailed the sustainability/security/competitiveness energy
trilemma, the issues crystallised in 2015.
First, the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act was passed which placed Ireland’s
climate policy in legislation. Second, the White Paper published that year, Ireland’s Transition to
a Low Carbon Energy Future 2015-2030, included a vision where, among other things, energy
sector emissions would be reduced by 80-95 per cent, compared to 1990 levels, by 2050, and
fall to zero or below by 2100.
The White Paper positioned this target firmly within the energy trilemma, describing the need to
‘strike a balance’ between three ‘core objectives’ – environmental, economic, and social (DCENR,
2015).
Box 2.1: Trade-Offs Central to Ireland’s Energy Transition Policy under White Paper 2015
Ireland’s energy policy must address three core objectives – the three energy pillars: - sustainability;
- security of supply; and
- competitiveness – leading to affordable energy for domestic and business consumers.
Sustainability is the provision of energy that meets current demands without compromising the
future – in terms of energy security and long-term damage to the environment. It is essential to
reduce our dependence on imported fuels and to combat climate change through the reduction
of energy-related GHG emissions in the transition to 2050. Security of supply is necessary to
the functioning of our society and economy. Price competitiveness is needed both for business
(which provides employment and creates wealth) and for households (which need affordable
energy and protection against energy poverty).
Our new energy policy framework seeks to strike a balance between the three pillars to ensure a
sustainable, secure and competitive energy system for Ireland.
Source: Ireland’s Transition to a Low Carbon Energy Future 2015-2030 (DCENR, 2015:27).
A decade on from the White Paper, the trilemma framing remains to the fore, and not just
for policy-makers in Ireland. Speaking at a recent meeting of EU Climate Ministers, the
representative from Poland said: ‘We don’t want to destroy the economy. We don’t want to
destroy the climate. We want to save both at the same time’.⁷ In agreeing to a binding 90 per
cent reduction of net GHG emissions by 2040, the EU Council ‘made some adjustments to
reflect concerns about the EU’s competitiveness [and] the need for a just and socially balanced
transition…’ (European Council, 2025).
7 Polish Deputy Climate Minister, Krzysztof Bolesta. November 8th 2025.
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At that EU gathering to agree the 90 per cent emissions reduction target, the Irish
representative said that Ireland agrees on ‘the opportunity that ambitious climate action brings
for boosting competitiveness, but we should not underestimate the challenges it will mean
for individuals, households, and businesses. Maintaining social cohesion is essential, but it
will not be easy’ (Connelly, 2025). This is just the latest example of the need to align national
environmental, economic, and social objectives as Ireland adopts ambitious new targets.
There have been significant energy policy developments during the six-year journey from
the White Paper to the adoption of legally binding climate and energy emissions targets in
Ireland. In 2017, the Citizen’s Assembly on Climate Change issued its report which included a
recommendation for national sectoral targets for emissions reductions, and two years later the
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change issued its call for new legislation which would
set ambitious climate and renewable electricity targets (Houses of the Oireachtas and Joint
Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action, 2019). In 2020, the Programme for Government
committed to a new Climate Action Bill to set emissions targets in law (Government of Ireland,
2020a).
Next, in 2021, the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act established a
legally binding framework for Ireland’s targets. These now include: - Increasing the share of energy from renewable sources to 43 per cent by 2030, with:⁸
o 16 per cent renewable energy in heat;
o 29 per cent renewable energy in transport; and
o 80 per cent renewable energy in electricity. - A 51 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, compared to 2018.
- Transition to a climate resilient, biodiversity rich, environmentally sustainable and climate
neutral economy by no later than the end of the year 2050.
Connected to this, these targets form part of the European Union’s (EU) collective efforts
to become carbon neutral by 2050, and failing to meet these commitments could result in
substantial costs (e.g. a requirement to purchase compliance from other EU Member States;
potential financial sanction).
The penultimate step in the journey from the ambition of 2015’s Energy White Paper to today’s
challenging targets was the adoption of legal requirement to agree a series of five-year carbon
budgets (starting in 2021), including sectoral emission ceilings. The first two carbon budgets,
proposed by the Climate Change Advisory Council, are to lead to the targeted 51 per cent
reduction in emissions by 2030. The final step was the requirement that annual Climate Action
Plans include actions to comply with the carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings (see
section 3.2 also). For example, in 2023 the Climate Action Plan set out additional renewable
power generation targets for 2030: - 9 gigawatts (GW) from onshore wind;
- 8 GW from solar; and
- at least 5 GW of offshore wind energy.
8 Based on the EU’s Renewable Energy Directives, RED II and RED III.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Overall, the ambitious targets emerging from the Climate Act, the carbon budgets, the sectoral
emissions ceiling, and the Climate Action Plan(s) must be achieved while reconciling the
trade-off between the delivery of: clean, sustainable, and renewable power; secure, reliable,
and resilient supply; and affordable and internationally competitively priced energy. However,
while 2015’s Energy White Paper clearly named the trilemma (but did not move to resolve it),⁹
it is clear that at no point in the timeline above were the key trade-offs successfully known,
understood, confronted, and reconciled. It could be argued that this is an example of the
‘Jurassic Park’ critique, but in reverse: much time and thought was given to concluding what
should be done, compared to fully understanding what could be done.
2.4 Unresolved Trade-Offs and Knowledge Gaps
2.4.1 Failure to Agree a Pathway
To govern is to choose, but no consensus, evidence-based pathway to Ireland’s targets has ever
been agreed, though the targets have. Whether the commitment is to reduce energy sector
emissions by 80-95 per cent, to increase the renewable share of energy to 43 per cent by 2030,
to reduce emissions by 2030, or to become climate neutral, an energy system configuration
which provides the required or optimal environmental, economic, viability, operational reliability,
and socio-political outcome was never settled on.
In the context of finite resources and variable impacts, what is to be invested in and what is to
be ruled-out? Which system configuration of power generation, energy storage, and sector
coupling technology has a cumulative emissions trajectory towards Ireland’s targets? Which
configuration is secure, reliable, viable, affordable, competitive, and socio-politically acceptable?
Where no simple answer is possible, which system configuration and pathway is best?
The trade-offs inherent in Ireland’s energy transition goals, legally-binding targets, carbon
budgets, sectoral emissions ceilings, and penalty-related commitments, have never been
fully understood, confronted, and resolved. There is an absence of clarity (rather than, simply,
political will alone) which is harmful for policy, progress, and narrative. The reasons for this and
the consequences seem clear, and energy transition policy appears to have all the hallmarks set
out in section 1.2 above, to a lesser or greater extent: - The policy issue is particularly pressing; ambitious policy and targets are expected; coordinated action is needed; consensus via win-wins, rather than confronting trade-offs,
might expedite progress; laws and fines are installed as an alternative; there is strong
political competition; progress has been difficult and cynicism exists; policy actors can be
siloed; behavioural factors are likely to be at play; and, successfully reconciling trade-offs is
exceptionally difficult. - Progress has not been what is needed or promised; there has been a focus on ‘what is
needed’ as opposed to ‘what can actually be delivered’; political ambition at EU and national
level has led to ‘stretch’ targets; targets are adopted, maintained, and repeated despite a
9 For example, the White Paper was assessed as not quantifying the expected contribution of energy efficiency, renewable energy,
and fuel switching to the achievement of decarbonisation, and not being prescriptive with respect to the technologies that will be
adopted (Byrne – Ó Cléirigh, 2016). It was also described as being ‘long on ambition, but desperately short on detail as to how this
radical transition can actually be delivered’ (An Taisce, 2015).
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strong sense that they are unlikely to be reached; ambiguity, incoherence, uncertainty,
and risk are issues; some output is delivered, but the core problem is not addressed;
problems have been ‘stored up for the future’; and there is some disillusionment, cynicism,
and polarised debate.
There can be an assumption that in passing the Climate Act in particular, the policy system
had resolved the trade-off between environmental, social, and economic objectives. The
Government recently stated, ‘… the legally binding framework is so critical. It removes the option
of deferring action and forces us to confront the gap between our ambition and our delivery’.¹⁰
Some non-negotiable is implied.
Ireland continually restates a commitment to climate action and decarbonisation, and the
passing of the Act is a manifestation of this. However, there is a question over the extent
to which the policy and political system has truly adopted the constraint which is built into
legislation and all that has flowed from it with regard to the achievement of legally committedto emissions reduction targets, and the trade-offs it presents. Especially if it is not clear who is
accountable.
Recent expert testimony to an Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy put
key trade-offs in stark relief:
… what we can see in the discussions regarding Dublin Airport, data centres, and the
agricultural sector is that there are tensions, if not outright conflicts, between economic
goals and climate goals. For too long we have pretended that there are no conflicts and
cannot be any conflicts, and that it must be possible to simultaneously pursue our economic
and climate goals without any interference between the two. That may have been true 20 or
30 years ago. In my view, it is no longer true. We can no longer delay acknowledging that
and having an honest discussion about how to prioritise appropriate economic goals while
at the same time, absolutely and in a precautionary way, achieving our climate goals – Prof
Barry McMullin (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2025c).
There are cases being taken in the courts arguing that the failure to reduce Ireland’s emissions is
a breach of legally binding national (and EU) requirements, and a decision and any implications
are awaited.
The Council’s energy systems analysis work concluded that while the Climate Act provides a
clear objective for the country as a whole, ‘it does little to build common understanding of what
long-term action will be required in individual sectors such as energy’ (NESC, 2026: 14).
Accepting that legislation does not necessarily reconcile trade-offs is an important
consideration as the State acts to tackle wider infrastructure deficits. Legislation to accelerate
critical infrastructure and provide for emergency powers alone will not resolve trade-offs.
10 Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment statement to the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy, July 2nd
2025.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
In addition, as noted earlier, there are the significant financial penalties facing the State for not
meeting commitments, which also might imply that the trade-off resolution needed to reach
those targets is complete.¹¹
The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) and the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) have
estimated that Ireland may have to pay out between €8bn and €26bn to its EU partners if it
does not meet the targets it has agreed to (IFAC and CCAC, 2025).
The relevant Minister is reported as saying that, in relation to Ireland’s commitment to reducing
harmful emissions by 51 per cent between 2018 and 2030, this target will be missed by the
‘somewhat significant amount’ of around 15 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (Maguire, 2026). It
is reported that Ireland has argued at EU level that ‘member states had to be reassured that they
will not be unfairly penalised when faced with significant challenges and that in complying with
the 2030 targets, there cannot be a diversion of EU funds that could otherwise be spent on
decarbonisation’ (Connelly, 2025).
In short, these staggering, legislation/target-related sums have not prompted action sufficient
to deliver what was promised or needed. Coupled with doubt about whether the penalties
will ever actually be levied and what the sums might be, there is the issue of the intertemporal
trade-off (see chapter 1). On the face of it, costly action today should be set beside the cost of
inaction and fines, but for (elected) policy-makers those costs are not very salient. There is the
problem of today’s budgetary constraints and expectations, and a NIMTO – Not In My Term of
Office – problem (FitzGerald, 2019).
While legislation and budgets set the preferred direction, and very large financial penalties
appear to provide a significant incentive, their presence does not mean that the detailed work of
reconciling trade-offs and the alignment across objectives has been completed.
It is also fair and important to say that there have been broader, significant policy developments
in the decade since the publication of the White Paper. From Brexit, to major policy shifts in the
US, to the pandemic, to war in Ukraine, to a cost of living crisis, to trade policy uncertainty, and
general geopolitical upheaval- there have been head-winds to progressing the energy transition,
aside from the issue of trade-offs. Yet in the intervening years, the impact of failing to fully
resolve trade-offs before settling on policy and targets has become clear.
Over a decade on from the White Paper’s trilemma-wrapped emissions reduction objective, and
five years on from Climate Act’s legally binding targets, the failure to resolve trade-offs is clear,
not just from the frustrating pace of progress and missed targets, but also from the gaps in our
knowledge and strategy. These can be found in a number of areas of energy policy including:
power sector decarbonisation, offshore renewable energy, energy security, and digitalisation.
These are detailed below.
11 The energy transition is shaped a legally binding commitment to reduce emissions by 51 per cent on 2018 levels by 2030, and to
become a climate neutral economy by no later than 2050, and by EU policy. Efforts to reduce emissions from the electricity
generation sector are governed under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which will require a 61 per cent reduction below 2005
levels by 2030 for the ETS sector. Participating entities will be able to trade emissions units to reach compliance. Similarly, emissions
targets under the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR) will require reductions for Ireland of 42 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 in the
non-trading sector, encompassing emissions principally from agriculture, transport, non-ETS energy industries, and heating buildings
in the commercial and residential sectors. Again, the State can purchase emissions units from other EU member states to reach
compliance if domestic reductions are not achieved.
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2.4.2 Trade-Off Related Knowledge Gaps
Power Sector Decarbonisation Data and Pathway
Regarding power sector decarbonisation – despite the expert modelling process summarised in
chapter 3 – to confront the key trade-offs, the policy system still needs to know: - The required or optimal combination of power generation, energy storage, and sector
coupling technology to achieve decarbonisation;
o within power generation, the combination of solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, opencycle gas turbines, or interconnection required;
o within energy storage, the combination of short, medium, long term, or seasonal storage
(or types) required; and
o within sector coupling, the required combination of short-term flexibility (e.g. EV
Vehicle-2-Grid, heat pumps, district heating), long-term battery (e.g. sand), indigenous
hydrogen, or grid-enhancing industrial loads. - The total expected emissions, land-use requirement, biodiversity impact, the fixed cost, the
variable cost, the technology readiness, the physical constraints, the annual availability, or
the security of supply of any one specific combination of the above. - The expected environmental, economic, viability, operational reliability, and socio-political
impacts of any one particular combination of the above.
In short, there are hundreds of data points required to begin to assess the environmental, social,
and economic trade-offs inherent in the choice of technology associated with decarbonisation,
for which the policy system has no agreed data yet. At a more strategic level, NESC’s recent
analysis found that key questions about power sector decarbonisation remain unanswered,
despite the adoption of ambitious policy and targets e.g. when Ireland’s 2030 targets would
actually be delivered; Ireland’s power reliability beyond 2034 despite targets out to 2050; the
total systems costs of achieving targets; the power capacity required for net zero, when it might
be reached, and what generation mix should be used; whether surplus energy be produced
and what it should be used for; and how Irish energy exports could be competitively priced and
transported (NESC, 2025b).
Offshore Renewable Energy
In relation to offshore renewable energy specifically, for which ambitious targets have been
set for 2030 and on which much of the energy transition narrative depends, the Sustainable
Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) have called for a ‘decarbonised electricity system pathway,
setting out Ireland’s long-term ambitions for offshore renewable energy technologies and their
place within the wider energy system and addressing security of energy supply, cost-effective
energy for consumers, local jobs and economic benefits, climate and environmental benefits
and attracting foreign investment’ (SEAI, 2024: 9). This call came after ambitious targets were
adopted in 2023.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Energy Security
Ireland is facing strategic decisions on how to align its climate, energy, social, and economic
objectives with secure power supply to 2035. The International Energy Agency (IEA) report
Powering Ireland’s Energy Future states that there is a clear need to establish a unified crosssectoral energy strategy to set a vision that guides Ireland’s energy transition, supported by a
detailed security study on the electricity supply mix (IEA, 2025a). It’s analysis illustrates how
Ireland’s various national objectives coalesce around the power sector, highlighting the tradeoffs between energy security, decarbonisation, and affordability that need to be managed.
In a specific example, the IEA report flagged the trade-off between: high renewables
penetration, the viability of necessary back-up gas generators, reliance on imported natural
gas, potential supply disruptions, and the volatility of fossil fuel markets. The report states that
‘to manage this trade-off, Ireland will need financing mechanisms that can help guarantee that
there is sufficient thermal capacity to ensure electricity security, but investments do not exceed
what is needed’ (ibid,: 8).
Digitalisation
The Programme for Government commits to allow data centres that contribute both to
economic growth and efficient grid usage, by enhancing the use of renewable energy sources,
energy efficient technology and energy effective solutions. As it stands, the policy system does
not have the data to help resolve the inherent environmental, social, and economic trade-offs.
For example, there is, as yet, no agreed evidence on the likely development scenarios and the
associated employment, economic contribution, and emissions associated with each, or some
agreed multiplier for sectoral dependence, which might be needed to understand and reconcile
the trade-offs. Also the conundrum, if not contradiction, identified by NESC inherent in the
current ‘drive demand to drive supply’ policy approach to renewables development seems
unresolved (NESC, 2025b).
Further, the recently published Large Energy User Action Plan names unresolved trade-offs
related to energy system planning including ‘demand forecasts by sector (including industry),
spatial development assumptions, generation mix requirements, and consistency of gas and
electricity infrastructure objectives’ (Government of Ireland, 2026: 9).
2.5 Conclusion
Ireland’s energy transition must be progressed, and there are concrete signs that it is. Onshore
wind and solar capacity, home solar energy adoption, and retrofitting are making huge inroads, and harmful emissions reached their lowest level in thirty years, despite significant
economic and population growth. This progress suggests that unresolved trade-offs, ambiguity,
incoherence, and risk are not a major drags on policy and progress.
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However, the energy transition is not the example of successfully managed trade-offs it might
first appear. No consensus, evidence-based pathway to Ireland’s transition goals has ever been
agreed, though ambitious targets have. The most secure, reliable, viable, affordable, competitive,
and socio-politically acceptable decarbonisation pathway has never been identified.
Implementation lags far behind commitments, and Ireland is not making progress quickly
enough. Latest data suggests the 80 per cent renewables target will not be met without faster
progress, and Ireland is expected to fall well short of its primary goal: a 51 per cent emissions
reduction required by 2030. Carbon budgets, sectoral ceilings, and demand-reduction targets
will be missed along the way.
High-profile implementation failures (e.g. renewables deployment, planning delays, stalled grid
development) contribute to frustration among industry and the public about progressing the
energy transition.¹² Targets that will not be reached have been restated and ambition has been
increased instead of addressing key delivery mechanisms. A 90 per cent GHG reduction target
by 2040 is being introduced even as Ireland’s 2030 targets remain off-track. Successive plans
have promised accelerated delivery, yet immediate structural barriers remain regarding planning,
grid capacity, supply chains etc.
Given the competitive political and electoral environment, the response has been increased
ambition and ‘stretch’ targets. In fact, it could be argued that this characterisation applies to
areas of infrastructure delivery beyond the energy sector. Raising the bar on long-term goals has
merit but as the Council has argued, the focus must be on action now, next, and later, and the
achievement of imminent objectives (NESC, 2025b).
Despite the Energy White Paper setting out both the trilemma and the emissions reduction
ambition in 2015, the Climate Act making targets legally binding, and the adoption of carbon
budgets, emissions ceilings, and renewables targets, the failure to resolve trade-offs is evident
today – from slow progress to knowledge and strategy gaps in the areas of power sector
decarbonisation, offshore renewable energy, energy security, and digitalisation.
All of this is evidence of the failure to fully recognise, take on, and resolve key trade-offs in the
energy transition. Despite the complex legislative, policy, penalty, and investment architecture,
ambiguity, uncertainty, incoherence and risk are impacting progress.
The status quo is that, while policy-makers may know ‘what to do’, they do not necessarily know
how to do it in a manner that resolves key trade-offs i.e. aligns valid national goals for society
and the economy, as well as the environment. Political will alone is not the missing factor. Shortterm decisions have led to ‘successful failure’ whereby some output is delivered (e.g. record
levels of power from renewable sources), but the core problem is not adequately addressed (e.g.
the electricity sector and overall emissions failing to meet targets). Emissions reductions are
happening at a greater pace than previously, but are happening at a much slower pace than
targeted or needed. This can generate disillusionment and cynicism, reduce faith in the policymaking system, and polarise debate. An approach which is primarily technocratic, legalistic, or
12 It is reported that in November 2025, thousands of people from over 60 groups representing environmentalists, students, families,
faith-based groups, workers and unions, healthcare professionals, and many more gathered in Dublin calling on the Government to
deliver more ambitious climate action policy (O’Donnell, 2025).
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
procedural may avoid difficult choices and the need to secure true (public) buy-in, but such
avoidance risks creating a vacuum which can be filled by those less supportive of the policy and
progress.
As discussed in chapter 1, complex energy transition policy issues are sometimes encapsulated
in relatively simple statements of abstract policy objectives. Evidence, legitimacy, feasibility,
and progress might be in greater supply today if ‘what if?’ had been replaced by ‘how can?’
earlier in the process- How can 80 per cent of Ireland’s electricity came from renewable sources
by 2030? How can Ireland have five gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030? How can
Ireland achieve a climate-resilient, biodiversity-rich, environmentally sustainable, and climateneutral economy by 2050? How can we do this in a manner that balances Ireland’s important
national environmental, social, and economic objectives? Failure to confront these trade-offs, to
assess the feasibility of how these objectives will be achieved, has not resulted in good policy.
Unrealistic expectations, assessments of implementation failure, and the questioning of the
policy-making system’s ability to deliver has followed.
Ireland’s energy transition is not where it needs to be, but it must be pursued with determination.
The ideal time to confront and resolve the key trade-offs was prior to or during the adoption of
the White Paper in 2015, or in 2017 around the Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change, or in 2019
at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change, or in 2021 as the Climate Amendment
Act was debated, or when the five-year carbon budgets sectoral emission ceilings were devised
and agreed, or in 2023 when the Climate Action Plan adopted additional renewable power
generation targets. The next best time is now, and this work should progress in parallel to policy
action on many fronts. A number of steps to accelerate the energy transition in this manner are
described in next chapter.
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Chapter 3: Five Steps to Accelerate the
Energy Transition
3.1 Introduction
Ireland’s current energy transition pathway is headed into fog due in part to unresolved tradeoffs, and we must work to decrease (not eliminate) uncertainty. The previous chapters have
described the slow progress of the transition overall as well as gaps in our knowledge and
strategy for power sector decarbonisation, offshore renewable energy, energy security, and
digitalisation. While there is no silver bullet, if the key trade-offs outlined in the previous chapter
can be addressed, this can insert impetus into the transition, help defeat obstruction, and fill
key gaps. The pursuit of a greater understanding of trade-offs is not an exercise in obstruction
or delay but rather is an exercise in propulsion and urgency, in the absence of agreed nonnegotiables.¹³
It is important to note that policy-making for the energy transition can be akin to ‘repairing the
plane, while flying the plane’. The policy system can never have the full suite of data necessary
to understand all the elements of a process that runs for decades, amid the complexity of
energy systems. Energy transition policy action must be taken in the presence of uncertainty,
and uncertainty and trade-offs must be addressed while action is taken. We must never drop
ambition or innovation, or the pursuit of game-changing actions. Yet we must continue to do
what we can, when we can. Five suggested steps in this regard are detailed in the sections
below:
- Work hard to better understand transition trade-offs;
- Place a new emphasis on feasibility;
- Enhance energy transition modelling;
- Tell a story of transition that isn’t only looking to the horizon; and
- Supplement the Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan.
3.2 Five Steps to Speed-Up Progress
3.2.1 Work hard to better understand transition trade-offs
This discussion paper has outlined some of the reasons why important policy trade-offs are not
confronted, and the impact of this on policy and progress. These reasons are not an argument or
excuse for delaying urgent action. The policy system may not yet know all that it could or should
in terms of a decarbonisation pathway, but this is an inherently complex and uncertain policy
area. No amount of data-gathering or analysis can provide certainty, but what we do know with
certainty is that without pursuing decarbonisation, Ireland will not achieve it.
The State is working hard to gather the information required to understand and resolve the
trade-offs in important aspects of the energy transition. The research currently underway must
be completed and acted upon, and known gaps should be addressed.
13 ‘Obstruction’ here refers to intentional actions and efforts to slow or block energy transition or decarbonisation policies that are
commensurate with the current scientific consensus of what is necessary. See the Climate Social Science Network at www.ccsn.org
for further discussion.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Complete and Respond to Current Research
There are initiatives underway across the policy system which are a recognition that the
trade-offs inherent to the energy transition have yet to be fully understood, confronted, and
reconciled, and are an example of the policy system doing something about it. For example:
- The Climate Action Plan includes a request to SEAI to lead on developing an evidencebased pathway, or choice of robust alternative pathways, for decarbonising the electricity
system after 2030. The development of pathways is to include assessing technologies
based on economic, technical, environmental, and social trade-offs. This Decarbonised
Electricity System Study (DESS) is expected to be concluded by the end of 2026 (SEAI,
2023). - The Department of Climate, Energy, and the Environment engaged the International Energy
Agency to provide an independent assessment of Ireland’s electricity security as the country
transitions its energy system through 2035. It highlights policy considerations to weigh,
based on their costs and benefits (IEA, 2025a). - The Department of Enterprise, Tourism, and Employment (DETE) has commissioned a study
on the economic and societal impacts of data centres in Ireland and on scenarios for
developing the data centre landscape beyond 2030 with a view to optimising the future
benefits to Ireland. This includes estimating economic and environmental impacts to better
understand policy options (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2025b). - DETE has published Large Energy Users Action Plan which, among other things, names
trade-offs inherent in energy system planning (Government of Ireland, 2026).
These, and similar, analyses across the policy system must be completed and acted upon. If they
fail to adequately address trade-offs, they will have to be added to.
The availability and use of real-time data can have a positive impact on policy-making (NESC,
2022). However, the initiatives above make plain the hard work involved in identifying and
gathering the evidence required to assess trade-offs.
For example, there are hundreds of estimable data points required to begin to understand tradeoffs inherent in power sector decarbonisation, for which the policy system has no agreed data.
From SEAI’s work, we know there are in fact approximately 360 such data points, and behind
each primary data point there are many more secondary and tertiary data points. As part of
SEAI’s study, experts will make pairwise comparisons on each qualitative criterion across thirty
technologies, generating a further 2,175 secondary data points. It is difficult if not impossible
(as Ireland’s experience has shown) to confront the trade-offs and make meaningful policy and
progress without such information.
In addition, the IEA undertook extensive analysis in preparing its recommendation that Ireland
establish a cross-sectoral energy security strategy for the 2030s, which would consolidate
sectoral ambitions, assess trade-offs, and set clear priorities and milestones for developing
power system infrastructure, markets and operations.
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The analytical work in these examples is steered by key actors, involves contracting external
expertise, and in some cases involves extensive stakeholder consultation exercises. While it is
ultimately the Government collectively who will take the decisions, the hard work of confronting
trade-offs and building evidence, feasibility, and legitimacy must take place close to the policy
area being explored. It must be undertaken by key actors and stakeholders. As per Ireland’s
handbook on good policy, those who will implement the policy should resolve the trade-offs and
engage with everybody involved in the delivery process to help translate and tailor policies into
concrete outcomes which have legitimacy (Government of Ireland, 2025h).
The research examples above recognise that appealing to the centre of government as the
institutional arrangement to confront and resolve specific, competing objectives is not (always)
the optimal approach. The centre’s convening authority, cross-Departmental structures, and
stakeholder engagement forums are not equivalent to what is necessary to successfully
interrogate and resolve trade-offs.
Previous NESC Secretariat research has highlighted the challenge of building a shared
understanding on infrastructure projects. Complexity, uncertainty, incoherence, and ambiguity
make it less feasible to formulate expert advice in isolation from stakeholders, practitioners, and
political actors (Thomas and O’Donnell, 2017). The complexity of trade-offs limits the separation
and independence of analysis from societal contestation and political decision-making.
Translating trade-off analysis into trade-off resolution requires political will and authority.
Overall, successfully resolving trade-offs requires the capacity, structures, and time for
comprehensive analysis, and for effective engagement on specific policies and projects
between policy-makers, experts, interest groups, local communities, and politicians.
Address Analytical Gaps
One key barrier to addressing the trade-offs inherent in the energy transition identified by
NESC is the absence of key information. As described earlier, while we know the technologies
that can work, the policy system does not yet know the optimal technology combination for
decarbonisation, or the expected environmental, economic, viability, operational reliability, and
socio-political impacts of any particular combination. This impacts negatively on the pace of
delivery.
The Decarbonised Electricity System Study (DESS) being undertaken by SEAI should address
this gap for the power system, for the post 2030 period. However, a gap remains regarding
information to inform power sector decarbonisation for the five years from now to 2030.
Further, there is no similar study underway for the decarbonisation of the heat or transport
sectors, covering any time period.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Regarding power sector decarbonisation in the years up to 2030, the policy system should seek
to exploit the analytical methods and resources being created and applied under the DESS. This
could include: - Executing further simulations of the DESS Energy System Model to provide refined insights
on the priority decarbonisation pathways, including environmental, social, and economic
considerations where possible. - Embedding multi-criteria analysis and expert elicitation within all policy pathway exercises to
provide data that techno-economic modelling cannot. - Fostering the development of a research community that utilises and contributes to the
development of modelling. - Undertaking analysis in the near-term to evaluate the GHG and environmental impacts of
proposed transitional technologies, to support trade-off decision-making. - Examining carefully the temporal trade-off involved in making near-term large-scale capital
investments which might close off medium-term options for decarbonisation.
Finally, consideration should be given to completing both a decarbonised heat system study and
a decarbonised transport system study which would provide the policy system with a credible
pathway to remove greenhouse gas emissions from both sectors in Ireland.
For example, working towards an agreed, comprehensive decarbonisation pathway for the heat
sector would see the sector receive policy research and action commensurate to its impact. In
the year 2000, annual greenhouse gas emissions from the heat sector and the power sector
were at a similar level (each at approx. 16 MT CO₂ eq). While emissions from the power sector
have fallen to 8 MT CO₂ eq. in the interim, those from the heat sector now stand at 12 MT CO₂
eq.
Given that it is the backbone of Ireland’s energy decarbonisation strategy, the power sector
has rightly been the subject of intense analysis and policy attention, and renewable power
generation has a series of formal targets assigned to it. However the same is not true of the heat
sector. The Government recently allocated €500m in capital funding for decarbonising the heat
sector, 14 per cent of the total allocated to developing the power grid.
There are a number of explanations for this disparity (e.g. absence of associated utility
actors; limited experience of heat sector technology adoption in Ireland relative to European
counterparts), and despite the publication of the National Heat Study (SEAI, 2022) and the pilot
District Heating Scheme in Dublin, the pathway for decarbonisation of the heat sector is even
more uncertain than that for power sector.
An agreed, comprehensive decarbonisation pathway which encompassed the heat sector would
also allow exploration of the relative state of readiness of various technologies (e.g. heat pumps,
district heating, biomethane, and hydrogen). Though the National Heat Study set out the range
of technologies and trajectory towards emissions targets, it did not – as the DESS study does –
assess these technologies against multiple criteria such as affordability, security and reliability of
supply, and socio-political acceptance.
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Overall, having separate plans for power, heat, and transport and working hard in the
ways described above should provide Government with an evidence-based pathway for
decarbonising from 2027 which has confronted key issues. More importantly, it should spur
a new emphasis on reconciling the key trade-offs inherent in delivering on Ireland’s energy
transition targets.
3.2.2 Place a new emphasis on feasibility
Given the not insignificant progress to date, there could be a view that the policy system
has sufficiently reconciled the key trade-offs and knows what to do to complete the energy
transition (e.g. deliver far more clean energy generation capacity and supporting infrastructure,
eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies, quickly transpose relevant EU Directives, introduce bundled
consumer incentives for the combined adoption of solar PV, heat pumps, and electric vehicles,
make it easier for farming households to avail of grants, and review State supports for
decarbonisation etc.).
In other words, ‘the critical missing factor is not conceptual, financial, or technological: it is the
need for political leadership and the public mobilisation to commit to decisive climate action –
while we still have the time and capacity to do so’ (McMullin, 2017).
In parallel, as discussed in chapter 2, there can also be an assumption that in passing the Climate
Act, making legally binding commitments, modelling a path to an emissions profile consistent
with the 1.5 degrees Paris Agreement, and adopting carbon budgets and sectoral ceilings, that it
is just a matter of getting on with it.
A regular charge is that the primary problem is that Irish policy-makers are failing to give enough
weight to climate science, are underestimating the risks posed by climate change, and are
content with status quo policies, fearing electoral backlash, and lacking political will.
However, such a position risks missing one important point, namely that the policy system has
not yet fully understood, confronted, and resolved the environmental, social, and economic
trade-offs inherent in the transition, and that this is a barrier to good policy and progress.
These unresolved trade-offs lead to charges of contradictory policies and of policy-makers
‘speaking out of both sides of their mouths’ and of, for example, supporting energy transition
and targets while supporting the delivery of more data centres. Yet this is a manifestation of
unresolved trade-offs and unaligned national objectives.
This situation is slightly different from the so-called Junker Curse (Buti et al., 2008). In that
instance – speaking about post financial crash austerity – Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister
of Luxembourg and President of the Eurogroup famously said ‘we all know what to do, but we
don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it’.¹⁴ While there is likely an element of
electoral pressure, here, it is more a case of ‘we all know what to do, but we don’t know how to
simultaneously achieve multiple national goals as we do it’. Assuming that is even possible. As
detailed in section 1.2, this can have serious, detrimental consequences.
14 “The Quest for Prosperity”, The Economist, March 17th 2007.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Policy leaders cannot limit their actions simply to what is popular – that is not leadership – it
must include what is feasible, and make that happen. Feasibility is one of the three key pillars
of policy development (Government of Ireland, 2025h). However, a law, a target, or a sectoral
ceiling does not ensure feasibility. A dashed line that joins two points on a chart is not a true,
credible transition pathway; a pathway must be traversable (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1: Ireland’s Required GHG Emissions Trajectory
Source: Ireland’s Long-term Strategy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction, Government of Ireland, 2024a: 17.
At present we have excellent modelling and scenarios performed to be consistent with Ireland’s
fair share of emissions reduction required to meet the global 1.5 degrees temperature goal.
However, in the modelling, feasibility is more a function of technical readiness, than whether ‘it
can be done’ (Government of Ireland, 2025h). It does not necessarily confront the tetralemma
of ensuring sustainability, security, affordability, and socio-political acceptability. It is desirable
and possible to encapsulate a wider set of considerations and data which Ireland has deemed
important (see section 3.2.3).
0
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1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055
Ireland’s GHG emissions (including LULUCF)
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Carbon Budgets
Net zero pathway
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A feasible pathway requires recognising the fundamental importance of social, technology,
economic, environmental, and political factors (STEEP) in the success of the energy transition:
Arriving at a successful outcome will involve an assessment and understanding of all
interconnections, feedback loops and time delays associated with the energy system…
This will involve analysis of new technologies, government policies, regulatory frameworks,
consumer preferences, the interaction between different energy vectors, an understanding
of varying regional and sectoral perspectives, risks and uncertainties, a willingness to
develop new business models, and an appreciation of the potential geo-political
consequences of the energy transition (Nwankwo, Olaniyi, and Morgan, 2022: 499).
Where possible, feasibility assessment should be multi-layered; policy action may deliver
benefits A, B and C, but also costs D. Secondary policy is then needed to mitigate those costs.
Feasibility of the energy transition must be more than the technical readiness of technologies
and the availability of measures, must address multi-year impact on distribution effects, the
macroeconomy, investment, energy bills, energy security, national well-being, and it must be doable under realistic assumptions.
Otherwise, claims of ‘implementation deficit disorder’ or ‘lack of political will/urgency’ etc. in
relation to decarbonisation of the energy system miss the point and may deflect from what is
really needed to make progress i.e. a credible pathway which has reconciled key trade-offs and
aligns national objectives.
Given the centrality and importance of the Climate Act, confronting and reconciling the inherent
trade-offs would help solicit a supportive and meaningful social licence for Ireland’s carbon
budgets, the sectoral emissions ceilings, the energy efficiency and demand goals, and the
renewables targets.
Notwithstanding the excellent work of the Citizen’s Assembly and what followed, the tradeoffs inherent in the Act, carbon budgets, and ceilings – which entail a declining cap on available
national emissions – have not yet been confronted and resolved or sufficiently subjected to a
process of social agreement.
Furthermore, recent court proceedings and legislative developments highlight how problems
have been stored up. The extent to which, and how exactly, State bodies are obliged to carry
out their functions under the climate Act had to be adjudicated upon by the Supreme Court,¹⁵
and two emergency pieces of legislation have recently been tabled to address urgent energy
security and transport challenges, and which either deem themselves to be in compliance with
the Act,¹⁶ or exempt from it.¹⁷
15 Coolglass Wind Farm Limited v An Bord Pleanála, February 2026.
16 Head 20 of the General Scheme of the Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve Bill 2025.
17 Head 12 of the General Scheme of the Dublin Airport (Passenger Capacity) Bill 2026.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Placing a new emphasis on feasibility would also go some way in addressing an important
issue raised by energy transition modelling experts at a recent Joint Oireachtas Committee.
That Committee on Climate, Environment, and Energy heard that Ireland’s Climate Act is ‘world
leading’ in attempting to show what best practice is in terms of bottom-up commitment of a
developed country to the Paris Agreement would look like. However, while the Act ‘put all the
pieces in place, the working-out of the Act and the filling-in of the details are missing’ (Houses
of the Oireachtas, 2025c). In other words, there is a feasibility gap.
Without a feasible pathway, Ireland risks delay, delivery deficits, inefficient investment, rising
tensions between these goals, missed targets, and limits exceeded. Furthermore, without a
feasible response, there is a danger that important data such as the past eleven years being the
eleven warmest years on record, or that the 1.5 degrees point will be reached by 2030, will result
in fatalism.
Placing a new emphasis on feasibility would address issues raised by one of Ireland’s experts in
this field:
We have legally-binding carbon budgets and Sectoral Emissions Ceilings, but we actually
don’t have a scenario or plan that adds up to meeting them. Maybe it’s too politically
sensitive to map out what it will actually take to meet our climate commitments? But this
leaves a critical vacuum. It’s like signing up to run a marathon without knowing what training
plan is necessary!
We need scenarios that add up our commitments, not only to provide the evidence base,
but to move the Overton window of what is possible, and necessary, to meet our
commitments, and to hold the mirror to policymakers to show them the consequences of
their decisions. What would be in those scenarios? Most likely, a focus not just on building
clean energy technologies, but on actively phasing out fossil fuels, including managing
demand. The challenge will be to balance which futures areimagined and presented – those
that bring the widest possible benefits, that are transformative and disruptive, or those
which are the most politically palatable and are least challenging to incumbents and the
status quo? – Prof. Hannah Daly, Address to the board of the Sustainable Energy Authority
of Ireland, September 2025.
There are limits to how much detail is either possible or desirable in a pathway for reducing
emissions, in line with carbon budget constraints. Detailed actions are much better left to be
determined by distributed, bottom-up, responses from societal actors, but the policy-system
must have confronted and resolved critical trade-offs such as the declining availability and
thus potentially rising cost of fossil fuels, to enable societal actors to plan those distributed
responses. Such a new focus on feasibility would help counter the reverse ‘Jurassic Park’ critique
mentioned earlier, where much time and thought was given to concluding what should be done,
compared to fully understanding what could be done.
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This call here for an agreed, credible and feasible energy decarbonisation pathway is consistent
with NESC’s systems analysis of Ireland’s energy transition:
To realise synergies and avoid siloed thinking, create a Cross-Government Energy
Framework that addresses heat, transport, and electricity together in a coherent manner,
integrating existing strategies and plans for different policy objectives such as climate,
energy poverty, affordability, and energy security, and for different energy vectors such as
electricity, gas and biofuels.
The framework should aim to reduce uncertainty for energy users and investors. It should be
consistent with the National Climate Objective and the Climate Action Plan but also
integrate the broader social, economic, and environmental objectives associated with
energy, as captured in the energy doughnut. – NESC, 2026.
This call for a new emphasis on feasibility is also closely linked to how the energy transition is
modelled.
3.2.3 Enhance energy transition modelling
Trade-offs must be understood before they can be resolved, and energy transition policy, in
particular, has the benefit of extensive modelling and analysis which can help inform decisions.
The major physical, technology, environmental, atmospheric, and other considerations
surrounding climate change have led to modelling being extensively used to inform policy
making. This has been most notably through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) review process but also in national, European, and international policy making (Mercure
et al., 2019).
Modelling and scenario-building are now an ‘essential part of climate change research and
assessment’, and have increased our understanding of the long-term consequences of nearterm decisions (Riahi et al., 2017). It has also helped inform the significant debate which remains
about the optimal policy mix to achieve a successful energy transition.
A nation’s energy targets can be met via many different combinations of technological and
socio-economic policy options, where trade-offs must be resolved. Climate change/impact and
energy transition models allow consideration of different options in the face of fundamental
uncertainty, and ‘have been crucial’ by providing a basis for the exploration of options, policies,
and impacts (ibid.) The modelling work reviewed by the IPCC, specifically the value of shared
socioeconomic pathways, is highlighted in the literature (O’Neill et al., 2017).
The overarching context for energy transition modelling in Ireland is the Climate Action and Low
Carbon Development Act which sets out the national climate objective, discussed above. This
is Ireland’s commitment to pursue and achieve, no later than 2050, a transition to a climateresilient, biodiversity-rich, environmentally sustainable, and climate-neutral economy.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Transition models are employed to describe scenarios out to at least 2050, and inform Ireland’s
crucial carbon budgets (Houses of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate, Environment
and Energy, 2025): - The energy system is modelled using the TIMES-Ireland Model (TIM) from University College
Cork; - Agriculture is modelled using Teagasc’s FAPRI-Ireland model; and
- Both agriculture and land use are modelled using the GOBLIN model and FERS Carbon
Budgets Model by the University of Galway.
The TIM is an energy systems optimisation model which aims to quantify ‘cost-optimal
pathways for the energy system (encompassing the primary energy supply, power, transport,
buildings and industry sectors) to meet future energy demands’ (University College Cork/Energy
Policy and Modelling Group, 2025).
The energy system modelling is performed to be consistent with the Climate Act’s requirement
to meet specific ‘ultimate objectives’, including those outlined in the Paris Agreement (United
Nations, 2015). Core to this, and hence to Ireland’s energy system modelling, is the objective
of keeping the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, and Ireland’s so-called fair share of
emissions reduction required to meet that objective:
… carbon budgets are of great importance. Carbon budgets are the mechanism through
which Ireland translates its international climate obligations into binding limits at home. They
are our contribution to the Paris Agreement goal of holding global temperature rise to 1.5
degrees… Carbon budgets also matter for the sectors that need to transform. They should
give clarity and direction to farmers, energy companies, industry and households about the
scale, direction and pace of change required. If they are to succeed, they must be
transparent, robust and subject to close public scrutiny…. Prof. Hannah Daly (Houses of the
Oireachtas, 2025c).
The Act then mandates the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) to propose carbon
budgets which, if achieved, would result in Ireland achieving the National Climate Objective.
Finally, the Act states that sectoral ceilings must be prepared. These ceilings set out the
maximum level of harmful emissions that are permitted in each sector of the economy during
a carbon budget period. The CCAC’s Carbon Budgets Working Group and energy system
modelling scenarios underpin the process.
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Figure 3.2: Ireland’s Carbon Budgets and Projected Emissions 2018–2030
Source: Climate Change Advisory Council, 2025. CB1, Carbon Budget 1 (2021–2025); CB2, Carbon Budget 2 (2026–2030); WAM, with
additional measures; WEM, with existing measures.
Overall, Ireland’s energy transition strategy has some of the most sophisticated and impactful
modelling exercises underpinning it and, in that context, has mechanisms to understand and
address trade-offs. This in turn contributes to the foundations of sound policy.
Ireland is acknowledged internationally within the modelling community as world class in its
analytical work, and while the policy system will always seek better models and more certainty,
uncertainty will always exist, and modelling exercises have their limitations.
To begin, the modelling used by the policy system does not attempt to encapsulate the full
range of trade-offs which the policy system must grapple with. The models choose the optimal
level of technology deployment in a given year to meet carbon budgets and energy demands
in each scenario. They also include certain subjective constraints to try produce feasible and
credible decarbonisation pathways.
However, energy system modelling may not explicitly model several important factors,
including the just transition,¹⁸ biodiversity impacts, and consequences for investment, the
macroeconomy, energy bills, and energy security (Daly et al., 2024).¹⁹
0
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18 The Just Transition Taskforce has agreed that the following definition of ‘just transition’ appropriately reflects the situation in Ireland.
‘A Just Transition to a climate neutral Ireland will build a better future for all and ensure no-one is left behind. This will be achieved
through social dialogue, promoting decent living standards, and proactive planning to anticipate change. It will support and develop
sustainable and quality jobs and employment opportunities, reskilling and training. Through investment in services, infrastructure
and social protection, people and communities that may be affected by this transition will be supported in a manner that is inclusive,
equitable, and fair (Government of Ireland, 2024b).
19 The Tradable Energy-Emission Quotas (TEQs) approach proposed at the Citizen’s Assembly on Climate Action also leaves many
details to be refined such as determination of a national emissions pathway, underpinning infrastructure and supports, and dealing
with potential effects on international competitiveness (McMullin, 2017).
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
While these are considerations which may be set aside by energy models, these are urgent and
important considerations for the policy system. There are social and economic variables which
could be included in energy transition modelling which would see it more closely reflect social,
economic, and environmental trade-offs (see below).
In addition, energy transition models can alter the trade-off by elevating one objective, for
example that of achieving our legally committed-to emissions reduction targets to produce
Ireland’s carbon budgets and sectoral ceilings. There is high value in, and a good rationale for,
this approach. For one, climate change and science do not care about other considerations.
From that perspective, there are none. Having models available which show what is required
from Ireland to fairly contribute to holding emissions to the 1.5 degrees Paris objective is
essential but it is not sufficient for trade-off resolution.
This again highlights the question of whether Ireland’s climate action and energy transition
framework specifies agreed ‘non-negotiables’, and also the limitations of the trilemma trade-off
framing. Committing to an energy-needs hierarchy frame (see section 2.3) would challenge the
policy system in this regard.
Further, energy system modelling has a specific comprehension of ‘feasibility’. Feasibility is
inter alia a function of the technical readiness of technologies – ‘Broadly speaking, the majority
of the mitigation measures and technologies depicted in these scenarios are already available,
and are currently undergoing exponential growth globally’ (ibid.: 24). Technological feasibility is
not a limiting factor in achieving rapid deep decarbonisation (Glynn et al., 2018).
This concept of feasibility (as opposed to ‘plausibility’) requires recognising the fundamental
importance of social, technology, economic, environmental, and political factors (STEEP) in the
success of the energy transition.
This is more than an issue of language – plausible vs. feasible; theoretical consistency and
capacity vs. operational and practical capacity; ‘it makes sense’ vs. ‘it can be done’ – and further
work to assess and understand the implications for policy and progress would be beneficial.
Overall, these limitations might not only impact the ability of the policy system to fully tackle
and resolve trade-offs, they may also hinder the building of the three pillars of good policy:
evidence, feasibility, and legitimacy.
It is absolutely true that the majority of the policy actions and technologies depicted in energy
modelling scenarios are already available, and are currently undergoing exponential growth
globally; yet (as described in chapter 2) the policy system does not, for example, have an agreed
evidence-base, in an Irish context, of the technical readiness or impact of the power generation,
energy storage, and sector coupling technology required to achieve decarbonisation. Nor have
the environmental, social, and economic trade-offs been researched and resolved to the extent
necessary to firmly conclude that societal readiness and political commitment are sufficiently
fixed in place. Given that, for example, the expected emissions, the land-use requirement, the
biodiversity impact, the cost, and the security of supply of required technology is not yet known,
the necessary societal readiness and political commitment may in fact not be yet attained. Nor
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is it clear how increased clarity on these factors would impact socio-political readiness and buyin; positively or negatively.
Modelling used by Ireland’s policy system could be enhanced by including the valid, competing
national objectives discussed in chapter 1. Having concluded its considerations, the Oireachtas
Committee recommended that the Climate Change Advisory Council’s carbon budget proposal
and reports be subjected to ‘an open and independent socio-economic analysis’ (Houses of the
Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy, 2025: 28).
Current energy transition modelling and scenarios do provide a quantitative basis for developing
analyses of other important aspects of climate action and energy transition (Daly et al., 2024).
This presents an opportunity to enhance energy transition modelling to encapsulate a wider set
of considerations and data which have been deemed important to Ireland.
For example, as well as a National Climate Objective, Ireland has adopted a National Well-Being
Framework to provide a high-level holistic overview of how the country is doing, economically,
environmentally, and socially (Government of Ireland, 2025j). Performance is reviewed by
comparing Ireland’s relative position using the latest available data (generally across the EU) on
35 indicators. These indicators cover factors such as overall life satisfaction, lifelong learning,
household net wealth, employment rate, real household disposable income, average distance
to everyday services, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, pollution and other environmental problems,
water body quality, and more.
In part, the adoption of the National Well-Being Framework and its wide set of indicators is a
reflection of the importance of looking beyond traditional (typically economic) measures of
national performance and progress (Cahill and FitzGerald, 2023). The Well-Being Framework
sets out factors that the policy system is to be mindful of, and could inform the selection
of indicators or data to be included in enhanced energy transition modelling that better
reflects pressing trade-offs. Employing them in modelling activity would be an example of the
meaningful use of the National Well-Being Framework, and its greater use in strategies could
also help harmonise policies across the system.
As NESC understands it, there is no technical barrier to including social, environmental, and
economic indicators or data in current energy transition modelling or to linking engineering
energy systems models with, say, macroeconomic models to capture feedback effects (Glynn,
2015).
For example, the models can be amended for optimisation with multiple objective functions,
such as emissions minimisation, and cost minimisation, and household bill minimisation etc.
There are functions and practices in models that can include macro-economic feedback, energy
security, and climate and biodiversity damages. This would go some way in devising a credible,
feasible decarbonisation pathway that recognises, confronts, and reconciles critical trade-offs.
All of this is an argument to confront rather than avoid trade-offs in analysis to inform policy.
While strategic foresight exercises play an important role, they must not be an alternative to
confronting pressing trade-offs, or simply gloss-over or look beyond them.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Enhancing energy modelling in this way would also address the findings of assessments of
research and policy during the Covid-19 pandemic, regarding the need to build and strengthen
knowledge translation. This involves improving the interaction among the producers and users
of research, removing the barriers to research use, and tailoring information to different target
audiences so that effective interventions are used more widely (Ó’Gallachóir et al., 2024). In this
context, the research question being addressed by energy modelling could better reflect the
need for the policy system to better understand, confront, and resolve trade-offs.
Overall, there is a broad range of energy models being used across the system (Government
of Ireland, 2025f). It will be the combination of insights from a range of different modelling
frameworks that will enhance their impact on policy-making. Each modelling approach has its
strengths and weaknesses, and one challenge will be coordinating a system that can provide
policy-makers with insights from the necessary range of perspectives. This will likely mean
greater investment in modelling resources.
In parallel, energy transition modelling should be enhanced by encapsulating a wider set of
considerations such as just transition, biodiversity impacts, and consequences for investment,
the macroeconomy, energy bills, and energy security, as well as data on considerations which
Ireland has deemed important e.g. with reference to the National Well-Being Framework.
Finally, it important that there is strong pipeline of modelling skills and enterprises from the
higher education sector, coupled with strong absorptive capacity within the policy system to
help steer, understand, interrogate, and integrate modelling activities across policy areas.
3.2.4 Tell a story of transition that isn’t only looking to the horizon
Energy transitions must resolve trade-offs, weigh costs and benefits, and bring the public on
board: ‘While the net-zero transition offers significant opportunities, there are also potential
costs which can lead to concerns among citizens. Failure to address these not only risks
inequitable outcomes, but could also lead to public opposition, slowing or halting the transition’
(OECD, 2025: 25). The policy system must build support and build clean energy infrastructure in
tandem.
The latest World Energy Outlook has found that countries around the world are contending
with pressing energy security threats and growing longer-term risks across an unprecedented
range of fuels and technologies, thrusting energy into the heart of geopolitical tensions and
elevating it as a core issue of economic and national security (IEA, 2025b). At the same time,
fears of climate change are decreasing across the world – in the United States, China, and many
Western countries – relative to other concerns, even after the hottest year on record (Forest
Stewardship Council, 2025).
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There are some notable global trends: - Research for the World Bank reveals a global shift in support for the transition with, for
example, willingness to pay more tax for the transition falling by six percentage points on
average across 30 countries – between 2016 and 2023 (Cojocaru, Lokshin, and Torre, 2024). - In the United States (U.S.), the words ‘con’, ‘scam’, and ‘hoax’ are used at the highest
political levels to describe climate action and decarbonisation efforts, and the new H.R.1 –
One Big Beautiful Bill Act (US Congress, 2025) drastically reduces funding earmarked for
clean energy investment, which in turn will likely shrink U.S. renewable energy investments
and hamper decades-long efforts to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (UN, 2025a;
Beams and Subrahmanian, 2024). - In 2019, political consensus in the United Kingdom saw it take the lead globally in
committing to reducing its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 (House of Commons,
2019). That political consensus has since broken down. In 2025, one main opposition party
declared the 2050 net zero target to be ‘impossible’, pledged to repeal the Climate Change
Act, and promised to end the ban on new oil and gas licences to maximise extraction from
the North Sea (Conservative Party, 2025). Another opposition party has declared it will
‘scrap net zero’ and its associated ‘unaffordable, unachievable’ targets, and fast-track
licences of North Sea gas and oil, and grant shale gas licences (Reform UK and Oakden,
2025). - In the European Union, traditional political party delineations have shifted to dilute climate
action. For example, conservative and far right groupings recently aligned their voting to
approve the easing of requirements on businesses to disclose their impact on the
environment or exposure to the risks of climate change (Gros and Griera, 2025).
Co-operation is essential to energy transitions and policy-makers and communicators must get
the public on board. The recent deterioration in, and challenges to, the transition narrative are a
cause of concern. A stronger emphasis on the cost of living, competitiveness, affordability, and
reliability of energy supply is evident across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine.
Ireland will not be insulated from the tensions which have given rise to and sustain this pushback
internationally against the energy transition. Nor should the risk of the energy transition being
cynically leveraged in ‘culture war’ divisions be ignored or underestimated. We do not need that
here. In this context, the energy transition narrative is now perhaps more important than ever.
Ireland is currently well-positioned, with most people supporting climate action and renewable
energy infrastructure, believing it will improve quality of life and economic growth (EPA, 2025).
This must not be taken for granted: - While 86 per cent of people in Ireland think ‘climate change is happening’, just 40 per cent
say they are ‘worried’ about climate change (AIB, 2025). - Climate change ranks ninth, behind housing, cost of living, immigration, healthcare etc. in
priority issues for the public (Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks 2025). - Polling also suggests that over 60 per cent of people in Ireland are opposed to higher taxes
for actions to help achieve national climate targets (O’Brien, 2025).
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition - More recent research suggests that public concern about climate change has fallen slightly,
the share who are not very concerned is up slightly (as is uncertainty), while fewer than one
in five people think Ireland should phase out all fossil fuel generation as soon as possible and
rely fully on renewable energy sources (KPMG, 2026).
There may also be cognitive dissonance at play, where many who worry about climate change
do not adjust their individual actions. All of which suggests that support in the abstract should
not be assumed to equate to legitimacy for all policy actions is the purest sense.
Public support and legitimacy in Ireland should be protected by ensuring that energy transition
policy has, as discussed throughout this discussion paper, addressed trade-offs and is aligned
with social, economic, and environmental objectives. And has been seen to do so. This is central
to a supportive transition narrative and legitimacy.
The question of whether climate action and the energy transition has a communication
problem has featured recently in the media in Ireland.²⁰ The answer may be ‘yes’ or ‘not yet’. For
example, an energy transition narrative of cheaper and more reliable power has been delivered
to households and firms in Ireland for many years. The failure to confront trade-offs can lead to
claims that may not be easily or quickly realised or be accurate.
For example, the promise of ‘greener renewable electricity… which will ultimately provide
cheaper, green electricity to the consumer’ (DECC, 2024) has run into a realisation that, at least
in the medium-term, electricity will be more expensive for households and firms.
The average estimated household electricity bill, which was €1,255 in December 2021, was
expected to reach €1,877 in 2025, which is greater than that experienced by households at
the height of the energy crisis (Government of Ireland and Department of Climate, Energy
and the Environment, 2025). Almost 320,000 people were unable to pay their electricity bills
in December 2025, an increase of just over 20 per cent or 50,000 more customers in energy
arrears over the year (CRU, 2026). And NESC analysis has concluded that reliability of supply is
uncertain across the energy transition timeline (NESC, 2025b).
Looking ahead, the high level of necessary investment in the electricity system – which is
ultimately borne by households and firms – and the move to more fixed price renewables
contracts, will increase and put upward pressure on the fixed element of electricity bills.
Guaranteed fixed prices are provided to renewable energy providers for up to twenty years
under the auction system. Rather than emphasising the Levelised Cost of Energy or ‘savings’
in gas and carbon costs from renewables etc., what is important from a competitiveness and
narrative perspective is the Total Systems Cost associated with the transition, which is not yet
known (NESC, 2025b). In the same way that the agriculture sector talks about traceability ‘from
farm to fork’, energy assessments and communications must consider costs and benefits ‘from
turbine to toaster’ and ‘from solar PV to smart TV’ .
20 For example: “COP30 campaigners need new ways to engage as climate gloom and jargon leave public in the dark”, Irish
Independent, November 2nd, 2025; and “Does the climate crisis have a messaging problem?”, Newstalk Radio, January 15th 2026.
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It is notable that the highest priority recommendation of the UK’s Climate Change Committee
is ‘make electricity cheaper by removing policy costs from electricity bills’ (UK Climate Change
Committee, 2025).²¹
In October 2025, a UK parliamentary committee was told that modelling suggests that even if
the wholesale energy price was zero, electricity bills would still be the same in 2030 as they are
today, because of the increase in non-commodity costs.²²
That Committee also heard that ‘in all likelihood’ electricity prices for a typical UK customer are
going to be 20 per cent higher in four or five years’ time, even if wholesale prices halve.
If this were the case in Ireland, it may have a negative impact on public support given that
households and firms have been told that the wholesale gas price is a ‘major factor’ in
determining final retail electricity prices in Ireland (for example see CRU, 2024). It may in fact be
responsible for (just) one-third of the householder’s bill.
It has been estimated that, broadly, the cost of making the electricity makes up 35 per cent of
the domestic bill, managing the electricity system is 25 per cent, moving the electricity is 20
per cent, retailing the power is 10 per cent, and the policy-related cost (PSO, VAT etc.) is 10 per
cent (Deane, 2026). Consideration is likely needed in Ireland of where the distribution of the
burden of costs of energy infrastructure should fall across, for example, consumer bills, taxation/
Exchequer funding, and fossil fuel bills.
As it stands, it may be that the majority of consumers do not give detailed consideration to the
breakdown of their bills, between the wholesale price and fixed costs, but this could change
as cost of living and affordability pressures persist. (Consider how quickly Irish people became
familiar with the esoteric topic of bond yields following the 2008 economic crash).
It may also be the case that more people will come to understand and accept how the practices
of electricity retailers might lead to prices rising rapidly, but falling slowly (the ‘rockets and
feathers’ phenomenon – Bacon, 1990),²³ but might reasonably begin to query why falling
wholesale prices do not lead to any or only a little reduction in retail prices over a longer
timeframe.
Energy experts have noted that the outlook for wholesale prices and electricity bills is mixed and
uncertain for 2026, and expected research on the configuration of electricity bills in Ireland is
needed and welcome (Deane, 2026). This should inform a refreshed communications strategy.
21 Policy costs here refer to charges on UK bills such as the Renewables Obligation, Energy Company Obligation, Feed-in Tariffs, and
legacy Contract for Difference payments etc.
22 UK House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, Oral evidence: The Cost of Energy, October 15th 2025.
23 The ‘rockets and feathers’ phenomenon describes an asymmetric pricing behaviour where (electricity) retailers increase consumer
prices quickly when wholesale costs rise, but are slower to lower them when those costs drop. So electricity bills seem to rise ‘like
rockets’, but fall ‘like feathers’.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Much of the above is a challenge to the existing narrative and runs contrary to previous public
expectations of cheap, clean, reliable electricity. In this context, confronting trade-offs is crucial,
and policy and communications must be aware of and avoid potential behavioural and other
communication pitfalls. For example: - Any attempted shift in the policy/narrative emphasis from ‘cheaper’ to ‘more stable’
electricity prices must avoid gaslighting individuals, households, and firms. Gaslighting
pollutes the narrative. Research has confirmed the role of fairness in encouraging public
co-operation in climate action.²⁴ Any shift will have to be explained and not framed simply as
‘renewables were never going to be cheaper’, given the messaging over recent years and
the reasonable and understandable expectations of the public. The same is true of any shift
in messaging regarding power reliability, that it is ‘energy’ rather than ‘electricity’ that will be
cheaper, and high electricity bills now not being driven mainly by wholesale prices. - Avoid cognitive dissonance²⁵ whereby energy transition targets and goals are made or
restated when it is known – or sound evidence suggests – that they are unlikely to be
attained. Doing so can undermine credibility and public support.²⁶ - Remain resolute and hopeful, but not fall foul of optimism bias. Underestimating or
downplaying costs, risks, obstacles, and timelines in the energy transition can damage
policy, narrative, credibility, and buy-in.²⁷ - When presented with evidence-based, good-faith critique and/or advice, avoid motivated
reasoning²⁸ (i.e. ‘I don’t like it, so I don’t believe it’) and engage with and reflect on the data
and evidence on its own merits. - Similarly, when provided with fact-based, good-faith criticism and/or suggested corrections,
avoid engaging in whataboutery (or whataboutism)²⁹ regarding poor performance elsewhere
(e.g. ‘what about the agriculture sector?’ or ‘what about country X?’).
The purpose of communications is and must be to prompt positive action and direct actors to
supports etc. These considerations above are not a lesson in how to spin but rather, given the
current lack of necessary progress, a lesson in how to keep society bought-in and engaged in
the need to act.
24 ‘… perceptions of fairness are a strong determinant of cooperation and so, where hypocrisy from leaders is perceived, cooperation is
likely to breakdown’. See Martin, Timmins, and Lunn, 2024, p. 49.
25 Cognitive dissonance is where a decision-maker holds two conflicting beliefs. This could hinder strategic planning and delivery by
delaying necessary course-correction, as a first step towards policy revision is often acceptance that objectives and targets will not
be met. Such acceptance can be difficult in a competitive political environment. See Festinger, 1957.
26 There are examples of the policy system acting to mitigate cognitive dissonance. The Oireachtas Committee on Infrastructure and
National Development Plan Delivery recently called for engagement with an energy utility actor to query a new delivery target for
2026 to 2030, which was a 99 per cent increase on what had been delivered between 2021 and 2025.
27 The IMF state that optimism bias is not uncommon in infrastructure planning and policy e.g. to justify a project or make it politically
viable (Monteiro, Rial, and Tandberg, 2020). See FitzGerald, 2019, section 2.5) for a discussion of the impact of biases in policymaking.
28 Motivated reasoning is where a decision-maker arrives at desired conclusion by relying on beliefs that support that conclusion. See
Kunda, 1990.
29 Whataboutism is a particular kind of critical response and fallacy aimed at deflecting criticism of one standpoint by raising parallel
concerns about another. See Casey and Aikin, 2024.
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Recent negative international developments bring the trade-offs in the transition between
national social, economic, and environmental objectives into focus. Pessimism and cynicism are
often evident across infrastructure delivery and policy more broadly. The advice from climate
communications experts is that when the narrative turns negative, it is important to talk about
solutions and a sustainable policy response which has been debated and negotiated (Robbins,
2025). Making sure that the key trade-offs have been debated and negotiated is an important
task for protecting the energy transition narrative and maintaining and growing necessary public
buy-in and legitimacy.
Based on the deterioration of energy transition debate internationally (especially online, where
opposition can be amplified, and support somewhat drowned out) Ireland’s energy policy
proponents will have to stand tall and not buckle in the face of potentially fierce pushback.
To aid them, it is crucial that a proactive, evidence-based communications response is prepared,
rolled-out, and continually updated to protect and foster public support for the energy
transition in Ireland.
This response should learn from the negative developments internationally noted above, and
treat misinformation as the systemic risk that it is, not just the work of some ‘bad actors’ (Jalli,
2025).
Progressing this work in the near-term could fall under action 29 of the Government’s
Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan which is to enhance Government communication to
promote the importance of infrastructure delivery, taking an evidence-based approach. In the
medium-term, these issues could be considered as part of the EPA/UCD UWISCA project
(‘Using Worldviews to Inspire and Scale Climate Action’). The purpose of that project is to
support the transition to a low-carbon economy in Ireland by identifying the communication and
engagement strategies that are most resonant with certain segments of the Irish population.³⁰
Further, Ireland’s communications strategy should mind the capability-expectations gap,³¹ and
keep the gap between what is promised (and hence might be expected) and what is feasible
(and hence might be delivered) as narrow as possible, to maintain vital public support and
legitimacy. Emphasising the co-benefits of the transition continues to be vital, though care must
be taken to ensure that only the co-benefits certain to materialise are employed i.e. avoiding
messages of cheaper, more reliable electricity, or of Ireland becoming a major net exporter, in
the near-term. What is the plan if retail prices do not fall as renewables penetration increases
and wholesale prices fall? A refreshed communications strategy might also learn from policy
framings adopted in other policy areas and in other countries (FitzGerald, 2019).
Furthermore, the narrative must be focused on how to decarbonise, not whether to decarbonise,
as some who argue for pragmatism may in reality be angling for delay. Ireland must be evervigilant for ‘the obstructionist wolf in pragmatist sheep’s clothing’.
30 See www.climateworldviews.com for more detail.
31 The ‘capability-expectations gap’ analytical framework comes from international relations literature but may be useful in other policy
areas and in Ireland, including in energy transition policy and communications. See Hill, 1993.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Finally, in many ways, the positive energy transition narrative – of our own sustainable,
renewable energy sources with co-benefits of clean air, ‘green jobs’; ‘more reliable power’;
‘cheap electricity’; ‘net exporter of energy’, ‘Ireland as the Saudi Arabia of Wind’) – is a distant
one. The transition has to make sense at ground level, as well as in long-run forecasts, in
legislation, in models, and in sectoral budgets. NESC has already offered some advice on
connecting people to the energy transition (NESC, 2025a). Speaking about macroeconomic
performance versus the lived experience of homes and people, the economist Andrew Haldane
commented that economies need a story of growth that isn’t aridly told from 30,000 feet
above.³² In Ireland’s energy transition, there can be a tendency to look to the horizon – to 2040,
to 2050: Ireland needs a story of energy transition that isn’t told looking 30,000 feet away,
to the horizon. It must speak to the lived experience of individuals, households, firms, and
communities today. Ultimately, while communications are important, legitimacy is about a lot
more than messaging strategies.
3.2.5 Supplement the Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan
Ireland’s energy transition is, at its heart, a national infrastructure and investment delivery
project. The Climate Action Plan’s targets are to be achieved by delivering large-scale clean
energy infrastructure and vast sums of private and public investment. The energy transition
necessitates significant private sector investment, indirect supports, and large-scale public
investment. It has been estimated that the required 5 GW of offshore wind by 2030 alone would
cost €10bn in public investment and would require €5bn in energy grid upgrades (Government
of Ireland and Department of Finance, 2025).
One major policy development which it could be argued will address many of challenges
described in this discussion paper is the recent publication of the Accelerating Infrastructure - Report and Action Plan (Government of Ireland, 2025a). That extensive plan is the product
of the work Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce established by the Government to support
a programme of reform, advising on accelerating infrastructure delivery by identifying the key
barriers impeding progress, and how these can be overcome to unlock infrastructure delivery.
There are many welcome and urgently needed actions set out in the plan. The plan’s full and
timely implementation can address the legal, planning, regulatory, social, and operational barriers
that collectively hinder the delivery of infrastructure. However, it should be supplemented with
further action.
In the context of this discussion paper, it is notable that the issue of policy trade-offs does
not feature prominently in the plan. This can be explained by the fact that policy trade-offs
specifically are not among the most impactful barriers impeding infrastructure development
identified in the extensive consultation process which informed the plan (Government of
Ireland, 2025b).
32 ‘Labour Must Rethink Growth Strategy To Curb Rise Of Far Right, Says Top Economist’, The Guardian, September 17th 2025,
(Partington, 2025).
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The reasons for this are not certain. It may be related to the core activity of the majority
respondents to that consultation process (i.e. not policy actors in the main, but rather
infrastructure practitioners, companies involved in infrastructure delivery, the construction
sector, the legal, accounting, and consulting professions, the electricity and transport sectors,
commercial semi-State bodies etc.).³³ If that is the case, it is logical that the outcome of
the consultation process is an emphasis on external friction points that impact strategic
infrastructure delivery, as opposed to a systemic issue more pertinent to policy-makers, such as
policy trade-offs. It is understandable that the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce focusses on
the former.
This has some consequences. At the most basic level, the phrase ‘trade-off’ does not appear
in the action plan. The foreword does refer to ‘competing pillars’ of the protection afforded by
regulation, and the timely provision of infrastructure (Government of Ireland, 2025a: 5).
References to ‘competing issues’ which can ‘lead to inconsistency and hence drive uncertainty’
come under the specific topic of planning decisions and timelines (ibid.: 27). The trade-offs
presented in the planning process are far narrower, and perhaps less profound, than those
facing energy transition policy (see chapter 2) or the policy system more broadly. These crucial
macro trade-offs are unlikely to be of material concern in a planning process per se.
But the more substantial consequence for the topic at hand is that the plan on its own is not
intended to, and cannot be expected to, result in more successful resolution of key (energy
transition) policy trade-offs. Implementation of the plan therefore also cannot be expected to
prevent the harmful consequences arising from unresolved trade-offs and/or foster the helpful
impacts of successfully confronting them as described in chapter 1.
As outlined in detail above, what is required to understand, take on, and successfully reconcile
trade-offs is deep project-specific analytical work and comprehensive engagement, including
with the public, private sector providers,³⁴ experts, representative organisations, and politicians.
If the process is to be meaningful and impactful, it needs to be extensive, and will take time.
All of this is not to say that the plan does not contain actions that will help. There are five
actions closely related to the challenge of reconciling trade-offs. However, these actions do not
seem to have the necessary qualities named above, at least as they are described in the plan. For
example: - The action to deliver National Planning Statements (Action 8) does not appear to cover
the necessary wide range of actors to fully understand and resolve trade-offs, including
private sector providers. Further, it would seem unlikely that the necessary project-specific
analytical work and engagement could be concluded for all critical infrastructure project
areas within the plan’s deadline for consultation (Q3 2026). - The action to introduce Risk Appetite Statements (Action 20) also has a narrow scope of
actors, limited analysis and engagement, and a relatively short timeline.
33 170 submissions were received during the public consultation process.
34 Much of Ireland’s critical infrastructure and services are funded and delivered by or with the private sector. This is true in the case
of housing, communications/digital, electricity generation, and motorway infrastructure, for example. And it is true in the case of
related public services such as health, waste, child/eldercare, public transport, financial services, and some education and training.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition - The action to provide greater leadership support (Action 28) does not include projectspecific analytical work, has limited if any consultation process, is top-down and narrow in
scope (mainly public sector actors), and is to be concluded in a short timeframe (Q1 2026). - The action to enhance Government communication (Action 29) has similar issues, though
the ‘ongoing’ timeline is more realistic. - The action to establish a Benefits Realisation Framework (Action 30), as described, does not
include the actual weighing of trade-offs (including disbenefits) via the values attached
to the criteria (competitiveness, emissions, regional development etc.), and it is unclear
how project-specific criteria are agreed or by whom. Again, it is not obvious how private
sector infrastructure funders and providers are included.
In addition, as discussed earlier, one important lesson from climate and energy policy is that
legislation to accelerate critical infrastructure and provide for emergency powers will not resolve
trade-offs.
Importantly, the plan notes that while it sets out a programme of reform for improved
infrastructure delivery, the actions ‘will be monitored and reviewed for their… desired outcomes…’
and ‘… further actions may be considered if delivery is not sufficiently accelerated or externalities
arise’ (Government of Ireland, 2025a: 22). Further actions to address unresolved trade-offs
under the Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan initiative could be considered.
The negative impacts for the energy transition from unresolved trade-offs are also at play in the
delivery of housing, water/wastewater, and transport etc., yet the plan has no actions set out to
address them. The current suite of actions will hopefully be fully implemented, but the negative
impact of unaddressed trade-offs may continue to hinder the delivery of the energy transition
and wider strategic infrastructure. Examples of such trade-offs include those between sectors
(e.g. finite resources for housing, enterprise, transport, water, energy, education, and childcare)
or within sectors (e.g. hitting social, affordable, market housing targets with finite resources).
Others include delivering infrastructure plans, targets, and projects, while limiting inflationary
impact; addressing urgent issues while meeting national commitments (e.g. traffic congestion/
airport capacity, and decarbonisation); attracting international, skilled personnel for project
delivery, while ensuring adequate housing and services for them; and more. Furthermore, new
policy and targets which have not sufficiently resolved trade-offs can be expected to emerge,
for the reasons set out in section 1.2 e.g. the formal adoption of new emissions reduction targets
for 2040 at EU level.
There is an opportunity now to use the new Accelerating Infrastructure policy architecture. The
Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform, and Digitalisation and/
or the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce could consider how their continuing work can look
to address the issue of unresolved trade-offs in the energy transition, in wider infrastructure
delivery, and in new policy-making and target-setting.
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Chapter 4: Conclusion
The decarbonisation of Ireland’s energy system must be progressed at a faster pace. A
successful transition requires an energy system that is not only environmentally sustainable but
also secure, reliable, affordable, competitive, and socio-politically acceptable. This discussion
paper has argued that while Ireland has well-developed policy and institutions, and has
adopted ambitious, legally binding targets, progress is hindered by a failure to agree any ‘nonnegotiables’, to fully understand, confront, resolve fundamental policy trade-offs, and to align
national social, economic, and environmental objectives.
It is not clear that there is explicit, sufficient socio-political support for, and acceptance of,
the primacy of sustainability obligations over social and economic objectives. We cannot
pretend or act as if there is. That being the case, alignment of national social, economic, and
environmental objectives must be given the same priority as ambition. Important national
objectives for environmental sustainability, security and reliability of power supply, affordability
and competitiveness, and social cohesion must be aligned, achievable and be achieved during
the energy transition.
Harmful emissions must be reduced while the economy prospers; renewable sources must
make up the vast majority of supply while reliability is maintained and demand is met; clean
infrastructure for generation, transmission, distribution, and storage must be strengthened and
added to while prices are kept affordable and competitive; and social license for the transition
must be bolstered and maintained while costly and sometimes intrusive improvements are
made. Addressing these trade-offs via the three pillars of ‘good policy’ identified by Government
(evidence, legitimacy, and feasibility) is crucial. Without a robust plan for a clean, secure,
affordable, and competitive energy system, complaints of a lack of political will or of so-called
‘implementation deficit disorder’ achieve little.
Recent progress, including falls in emissions and significant growth in solar and wind capacity,
is something to be proud of but it is not an example of successfully managed trade-offs.
Implementation lags significantly behind commitments, Ireland is currently off-track to meet its
80 per cent renewable electricity target, and its 51 per cent emissions reduction goal for 2030.
The failure to reconcile trade-offs has led to knowledge gaps in key areas such as power sector
decarbonisation, offshore wind energy, energy security, and digitalisation. It has also led to
public expectations of the transition around affordability, reliability, and exportability which may
not arise in the near to medium term, presenting a challenge to necessary buy-in and legitimacy.
Ireland must be ever-vigilant for ‘the obstructionist wolf in pragmatist sheep’s clothing’. Equally,
it is essential that those who support decarbonisation can highlight policy shortfalls and suggest
improvements without fear of, or actual, misrepresentation. Otherwise, suboptimal policy and
outcomes can be expected to persist, for fear of providing grist to the mill of obstructionists.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition
Ireland has to avoid delay, obstruction, and fatalism, and the energy transition entering a
culture war. Better understanding and reconciling of trade-offs can inject impetus, enhance the
transition narrative, help defeat obstruction, and move Ireland closer and faster towards where it
wants and needs to be.
To accelerate progress when no non-negotiables have been agreed, the policy system must
place a new emphasis on how to achieve its targets, through a 360-degree lens that considers
feasibility and legitimacy alongside evidence, and reconciles trade-offs to better align national
objectives. This is a daunting task for the policy-system, and this discussion paper proposes five
initial steps for consideration:
- Work hard to explicitly define and better understand transition trade-offs: Complete the
important research underway, and address the knowledge gaps out to 2030 and in the heat
and transport sectors. - Place a new emphasis on feasibility: Move beyond technical readiness and the availability of
measures, to reflect a tetralemma of ensuring sustainability, security, affordability, and
socio-political acceptability; and set out an agreed, credible pathway. - Enhance energy transition modelling: Encapsulate a wider set of considerations and data
which have been deemed important to Ireland e.g. with reference of the National Well-Being
Framework. - Tell a story of transition that isn’t only looking to the horizon: Refresh the energy transition
narrative in light of developments at home and abroad. Ireland needs a story of energy
transition that isn’t told looking 30,000 feet away, to the horizon. It must speak to the lived
experience of individuals, households, firms, and communities today. - Supplement the Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan: Use this new policy architecture to
address unresolved trade-offs in strategic infrastructure delivery more broadly, not only in
the energy transition, and to improve future policy-making and target-setting.
Progressing these five steps to resolve trade-offs (and be seen to do so) is not an exercise in
delay, but one of propulsion. By confronting these tensions now, the policy system can build
greater certainty, and provide a credible, feasible pathway to a decarbonised energy system. It
can help build the three pillars of good policy, for example by:
- Bridging the evidence gap between what current modelling and research provides and the
need for an agreed decarbonisation pathway; - Bridging the legitimacy gap between the Citizen’s Assembly/Oireachtas Committee report/
legislation/carbon budgets and the lived experience of people, households, firms, and
communities; and - Bridging the feasibility gap between the technical readiness of renewable technologies and
social, economic, and political constraints in the absence of agreed non-negotiables.
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Specific, initial recommendations include: - Complete the Decarbonised Electricity System Study and respond to its findings.
- In the absence of an agreed power sector decarbonisation pathway out to 2030, seek to
exploit the analytical methods and resources being created and applied under the
Decarbonised Electricity System Study (DESS). This could include:
o Executing further simulations of the DESS Energy System Model to provide refined
insights on the priority decarbonisation pathways;
o Embedding multi-criteria analysis and expert elicitation within all policy pathway
exercises to provide data that techno-economic modelling cannot;
o Fostering the development of a research community that utilises and contributes to the
development of modelling;
o Undertaking analysis in the near-term to evaluate the GHG and environmental impacts
of proposed transitional technologies, to support trade-off decision-making; and
o Examining carefully the temporal trade-off involved in making near-term large-scale
capital investments which might close off medium-term options for decarbonisation. - Undertake a comprehensive study to provide the policy system with the data to resolve the
environmental, social, and economic trade-offs inherent in digitalisation and Large Energy
User (LEU)/data centre policy. For example, the study should provide agreed evidence on
likely LEU development scenarios and the associated employment, economic contribution,
and emissions associated with each, and some agreed multiplier for sectoral dependence,
and other data needed to understand and reconcile the trade-offs. - Consider completing both a decarbonised heat system study and a decarbonised transport
system study to provide the policy system with an agreed, credible, evidence-based
pathway to remove greenhouse gas emissions from both sectors in Ireland from 2027. - Undertake new analysis of, and agree, the understanding and application of the concept of
feasibility in energy transition policy, modelling, and target-setting, recognising the
fundamental importance of social, technology, economic, environmental, and political
factors, and competing national objectives. - Enhance energy transition modelling, for example, by encapsulating a wider set of social,
economic, and environmental considerations such as just transition, biodiversity impacts,
and consequences for investment, the macroeconomy, energy bills, and energy security, as
well as data on considerations which Ireland has deemed important e.g. with reference to
the National Well-Being Framework. - Include socio-economic modelling as part of the key work of the Climate Change Advisory
Council. - Ensure assessment, modelling, and communication exercises maintain a focus on Total
Systems Cost/consumer bills. - Implement NESC’s call for a Cross Government Energy Framework which provides an
agreed, evidence-based energy decarbonisation pathway which has resolved key trade-offs
and is aligned with national social, economic, and environmental objectives. - Examine where the distribution of the burden of costs of energy infrastructure should fall
across, for example, consumer bills, taxation/Exchequer funding, and fossil fuel bills.
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Addressing Trade-Offs in the Energy Transition - Create the Energy System Plan promised in the Large Energy Users Action Plan with
centralised spatial demand and generation projections; and ensure the plan resolves tradeoffs inherent in the shared assumptions and objectives, for example demand forecasts by
sector, spatial development assumptions, generation mix requirements, and consistency of
gas and electricity infrastructure objectives. - Implement the IEA’s recommendation that Ireland establish a cross-sectoral energy security
strategy for the 2030s, which would consolidate sectoral ambitions, assess trade-offs, and
set clear priorities and milestones for developing power system infrastructure, markets and
operations. - Engage the new Accelerating Infrastructure policy architecture to address the issue of
unresolved trade-offs in the energy transition, in wider infrastructure delivery, and in
new policy-making and target-setting, by supplementing their action plan. - Urgently prepare an evidence-based communications response to bolster public support for
the energy transition in Ireland, learning from recent negative developments internationally,
and linked to a new, credible transition pathway which aligns social, economic, and
environmental goals.