Galway Against Gas has held a protest at Tynagh Power Station where a new gas power plant is planned.
Galway County Council have granted initial planning permission for the new fossil fuel plant, however an appeal against their decision has been lodged with An Bord Pleanála.
A spokesperson for Galway Against Gas said that building new fossil fuel infrastructure is totally at odds with what we need to do to deal with the climate emergency.
The organisation, which is an alliance of local environmental activists, believes that new infrastructure like this will ‘lock us into fossil fuel usage for at least another 25-50 years’.
“In the last week, the International Energy Agency have said nearly half of existing fossil fuel production sites need to be shut down early if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C, the internationally agreed goal for avoiding climate catastrophe,” a statement from the group said.
“This comes on the back of a warning by the UN Secretary General that investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is ‘moral and economic madness’.
“Instead we need urgent investment in renewables, and measures to decrease the enormous energy consumption of things like data centres.”
An appeal has been lodged with An Bord Pleanála and Galway Against Gas is awaiting the outcome, “hoping they will see sense”.
“The last planning application made for a gas plant in the state was eventually rejected, so we are hopeful. Even if this appeal is turned down, we will not give up and will exhaust every possible avenue.”
“People are experiencing an energy cost crisis at the moment. Prolonging our reliance on imported fossil fuels from unstable markets is not a viable response. We should be producing as much of our own energy from renewable sources as we possibly can.”
