In 2023, 40.4% of Ireland’s electricity came from renewable sources, with wind accounting for 34.1% of the electricity generated.
The renewable energy share of transport was 5.7% in 2023, with biodiesel accounting for 4.9% of this.
Oil was the most popular type of central heating, used by almost two-fifths (38.9%) of households according to Census 2022.
Almost a quarter of households in Dublin City (23.4%) and Galway City (22.8%) used electricity to heat their homes in 2022.
Ireland contributed €0.7 million in 2022 to developing countries in support of clean energy research and development.
Ireland's UN SDGs – Goal 7 Affordable and Clean Energy is an update of the previous release in the series from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). These releases monitor and report on how Ireland is progressing towards meeting its targets under the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The CSO works with government departments and other organisations to bring together the data required for reporting on Ireland’s SDGs. This collaboration is formalised under the SDG Data Governance Board, which meets on a quarterly basis. The release for Goal 7 was developed in collaboration with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).
This is the seventh release in this series and includes data for Ireland for each of the SDG indicators selected by the UN to measure Goal 7 Affordable and Clean Energy. Data are available at various levels of detail which include geography, gender, age group and other categories, where relevant, in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.
This report on Goal 7 has six indicators which are organised into two user friendly chapters:
The titles of these chapters are based around common themes in the five targets which are measured in Goal 7.
The 17 UN SDGs are a set of global development targets adopted by the UN member countries in September 2015 to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The UN SDGs are driving the global development agenda towards 2030 (Agenda 2030) and address global challenges including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The 17 goals are interconnected, and leave no one behind, and the aim is to achieve them all by 2030. They recognise that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and help economic growth, while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
The CSO, Ordnance Survey Ireland* (OSI) and Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri-Ireland) established a project team in April 2017 to engage with a combined UN Statistics Division (UNSD)/Esri-Ireland research exercise with a goal to develop and deploy a new approach for monitoring the UN SDG Indicators using geographic information systems. The result of this exercise is a new website (Ireland's SDGs Data Hub), hosted on OSi's GeoHive platform, which is Ireland’s Central Portal for all SDGs and contains indicators data on the 17 UN SDGs for Ireland. All the indicators in this release will be loaded onto the GeoHive. This work has been formalised through the creation of Ireland’s Institute for SDGs (IIS) - an initiative between the CSO, OSI and the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC). The membership of the IIS is expected to expand with ongoing monitoring and reporting of Ireland's progress towards meeting UN SDGs.
*Tailte Eireann is an independent Government agency formed by the merger of the Property Registration Authority (PRA) and the Valuation Office and Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI), on 01 March 2023.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (23 July 2025) published Ireland's UN SDGs indicators data for Goal 7 Affordable and Clean Energy 2024.
Commenting on the release, Mary Smyth, Statistician, said:
"This latest release on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) has data on six indicators for Ireland, divided over two chapters: Affordable and Clean Energy, and Infrastructure. Data are presented in categories relevant to the indicators and geographical location, where possible. The UN SDGs and their associated indicators are, by design, wide-ranging in their coverage. As a result, the Irish data is provided by a number of sources including government departments, official organisations, and international organisations such as the UN. This release for Goal 7 was developed in collaboration with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).
The Results
The EU’s Renewable Energy Directives (RED) set out mandatory targets for renewable energy in Ireland. The overall renewable energy share (RES) was 15.3% in 2023, with contributions of renewable electricity (10.1%), heat (2.7%), and transport (2.4%). Renewable electricity makes the largest contribution to the overall RES and has been responsible for most of the overall growth in renewable energy since 2005. Wind energy has been the most significant source of renewable electricity in Ireland and accounted for 34.1% of all electricity generated in 2023.
Census 2022 found that oil and natural gas were the two most common types of central heating in homes. Almost two-fifths (38.9%) of households used oil and one-third (32.7%) used natural gas. More than half of households in some Midlands (Longford, Westmeath) and Western (Mayo, Roscommon, Galway County) areas used oil to heat their homes. Around two-thirds or more of households in the Dublin region used natural gas. Households using electricity as a source of heat rose from 8.6% in 2016 to 11.8% in 2022.”