Safety Before LNG
 Exposing the truth about the New Fortress Energy 'Shannon LNG' project
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For Immediate Release
Press Release September 22nd 2025
No policy support for Multiple LNG terminals in Ireland should see New Fortress Shannon LNG being refused Planning permission.

Expectation is growing that New Fortress Energy will see its planning application for an LNG terminal being refused, this, the fourth time it is being assessed by An Coimisiún Pleanála.

In the latest submissions received by the national planning authority after the High Court sent the planning decision back to An Coimisiún Pleanála for reappraisal, new hurdles appeared for the project attempting to import US fracked gas into Ireland with a proposed commercial Shannon LNG terminal and its associated 600MW power station:

  1. The commercial LNG terminal would run counter to the Government decision to only approve the construction by Gas Networks Ireland of an emergency-use-only LNG terminal.
  2. It would instantly flood Ireland with treble the amount of gas, which the renewable energy sector would not be able to compete with.
  3. It would breach all obligations under Section 15(1)(e) of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 (as amended) “of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change in the State”. Section 4(8) of the Climate Act also obliges assessment of carbon leakage in the Climate action plan and national long term climate action strategy (the Minister and the Government “shall have regard to [...] the risk of substantial and unreasonable carbon leakage as a consequence of measures implemented by the State to pursue the national climate objective”). Carbon leakage is defined in the Act as “the transfer, due to climate policies, of production to other countries with less restrictive policies with regard to greenhouse gas emissions”. There is no point in cutting emissions in one place if that leads to worse emissions elsewhere. That is why the Government must take carbon leakage effects into account when making climate action plans.
  4. It would breach sectoral emissions ceilings leaving Ireland exposed to millions more in fines from Europe. It would also undermine all the emissions reduction efforts in other sectors of the economy such as Agriculture (“Farming Not Fracking”).
  5. The Minister for Energy has refused to clarify the Government position on the commercial Shannon LNG planning application requested directly of him by An Coimisiún Pleanála.
  6. The emissions figures are mind-boggling. Trebling the amount of fossil gas in the market trebles the territorial emissions. The 600MW Power Station would account for, on its own, 1/3rd of all budgeted emissions from the entire electricity sector in 2030. Even if fracked LNG was to take a plausible 50% share of today's Irish gas market this would lead to carbon leakage comparable to half of Ireland’s annual Greenhouse Gas emissions from Agriculture when considered under Global Warming Potential over a twenty-year period (GWP20).
  7. 3 gigawatts of gas-fired stations already have planning consent, breaching the 2 gigawatts government policy target for new gas plants as identified in the National Development and Climate Action plans, with a further 2.7GW in the planning process. Gas-Fired power stations are paid to be on standby – in this case, a 10-year capacity contract worth €494 million would be paid to Shannon LNG – to ensure supply during peak demand or low renewable output. These costs are passed on to electricity customers in their domestic electricity bills via ‘capacity payments’ tariffs when Ireland is already one of the most expensive countries in the EU for electricity. Electricity bills increase for each unnecessary gas-fired power station that gets planning permission.
  8. The Government has already recognised in its policy statements that “fracked gas can have significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional natural gas, both nationally and globally, and the widespread use of fracked gas”, as proposed by Shannon LNG “would not be consistent with Ireland’s 2030 and 2050 climate objectives nor globally with the Paris Agreement”
  9. Ireland does not import any fracked gas or any Russian gas because all its imported gas is sourced from the UK and Norwegian North Sea gas fields. The UK's National Energy System Operator (NESO) confirmed in its Gas Network Capability Needs Report 2024 that "NTS compression does not currently support the transport of gas to the high-demand parts of Scotland from the southern zones or from the zone’s more southerly terminals at Teesside & Barrow" meaning only North Sea gas and no fracked gas is currently being imported into Ireland.
  10. An Coimisiún Pleanála is being obliged by the High Court to make a decision for the second time on this planning application by Shannon LNG because when it made the decision to refuse planning permission the first time, the ongoing draft Energy Review and interim policy was incorrectly classified by the Commission as national policy. This time, the Energy Review has been completed, having been approved without change by the Government. It would be reasonable to return the same decision to refuse planning consent because the Energy Review clearly does not support a private commercial LNG terminal being developed in Ireland.
  11. There is no policy support for Multiple LNG terminals. On March 4th, 2025, the Government approved the development, as an interim measure, of a temporary “State-led strategic Gas Emergency Reserve” in “the form of a Floating Storage and Regassification Unit (FSRU), to be owned on behalf of the State by the system operator, Gas Networks Ireland (GNI)”, as the optimal approach in Action 17 of the 'Energy Security in Ireland to 2030' plan approved by government in November 2023. It would reduce the risk of stranded fossil fuel assets, be for emergency use only, and would not support increased gas demand. This “plan” did not consider or support the development of a private commercial FRSU in parallel to a state-led emergency-use-only one.
  12. Gas Networks Ireland is assessing viable alternative locations for the State-led Strategic Emergency Gas Reserve approved by the Government in March and has recently received approval to conduct marine site surveys in both Cork harbour and the Shannon estuary to assess the suitability of both locations for the strategic gas reserve. The false distinction between private and public ownership put forward by Shannon LNG must be seen in the light of the decision made by the government that on climate and energy security grounds it is only approving the development of a State-led emergency-use-only gas reserve, one which would not constitute a new entry point to the gas network and therefore be consistent with Ireland's climate law and the EU Gas Directive. The State already argued in the High Court that “the ownership of the facility isn’t the issue it’s the function of the facility”
  13. If the Commission is to decide that no distinction may be made from a planning perspective between a private commercial LNG terminal and a public State-led, emergency-use-only reserve then it would be necessary to reassess the Energy Plan approved by the Government and undertake a corresponding Strategic Environmental Assessment of all the options.
  14. It would increase demand for gas contrary to Action 17 of the 'Energy Security in Ireland to 2030' plan approved by government in November 2023, which stated that any proposal for an emergency gas reserve in the country would have to satisfy 4 criteria:
    • A proposal which can be implemented quickly
    • A proposal which does not inadvertently increase gas demand by increasing the supply available on the market
    • A cost-effective proposal at the appropriate scale which provides sufficient resilience if a disruption to gas supply occurs
    • A proposal which is compatible with the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015-2021.
Central Statistics Office figures show that total gas consumption in Ireland in 2024 was 53,563 GWh. Shannon LNG’s EIA volume 2 states “The LNG vaporisation equipment onboard the FSRU will be designed to meet a send-out capacity of up to 22.6 million Sm3/d (approximately 250 GWh per day) natural gas“. 250 GWh per day equals 91,250 GWh per year. This means that the proposed Shannon LNG terminal would supply 170% more gas into the Irish gas grid than is currently being consumed in Ireland and action 17 automatically defines that as increasing gas demand.

The Power Plant in this planning application, Shannon LNG’s EIA states, would “use up to 2.8 million Sm3 per day (approximately 25.5 GWh per day) when operating at full capacity”. Therefore, the power plant, by itself, would represent a 17% increase in new gas demand in Ireland.

Shannon LNG also states in its EIA that “As part of the Masterplan, a Data Centre Campus is to be constructed to the west of the Proposed Development. This will be subject to its own EIAR and planning application.”
Wes Edens, owner of Shannon LNG, admitted that his project would “create our own demand” when he stated in an Earnings call in August 2019:
“I can't emphasize enough, I think the downstream assets we develop around these terminals are, in many respects, our most important projects. We basically end up creating our own demand. We're, essentially, negotiating with ourselves, so we know the guy who owns the data centers if we're building data centers.”

The full submission of 'Safety Before LNG' and 'Communities for Environment First' to An Coimisiún Pleanála, expanding on these issues in more detail can be downloaded here.

ENDS

Contact:
John McElligott - Tel.: 087-2804474 - Email: [email protected]
www.SafetyBeforeLNG.ie










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