Mr. Eugene Hendrick:

It is correct that forestry is excluded from the targets in the effort sharing decision of 2020. However we envisage that forestry would be a significant part of the sectoral roadmap regarding sequestration and other benefits of forestry. As we said in our opening statement, there are three aspects to the forestry component of climate change mitigation - sequestration, the trees growing and taking carbon out of the air; renewable energy, substituting biomass and forests for fossil fuels; and substitution of wood products for more energy-intensive materials.

There is very significant use of wood biomass for energy generation in Ireland. We estimate the forest harvest at approximately 3 million m cu. m per annum and approximately one third of that is used for energy generation. That is mainly in the forest product sector itself, for process heating and so on, but there is a very large increase in the use of wood fuels both domestically and in other installations. We estimate that wood use is saving approximately 300,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per annum. Otherwise that would be fossil fuel generated.

The Department has a number of initiatives under way on the use of forest biomass as a substitute for fossil fuels. Much of this material is small dimension thinnings coming from privately owned forest that were planted over the last 15 to 20 years and are coming into the management stage. There is a forest road grant scheme geared towards first thinning that is helping mobilise this material into the energy sector and other end uses such as sawmills and board milling. That scheme is in place under the current forestry schemes. We are also funding research into the supply chain in the wood energy sector because that is a new area. We have a very large project that is being carried out mainly at Waterford Institute of Technology that is examining the costing of harvesting wood fuels and how we can improve on that and become more cost competitive in that area.

We also provide information to the sector via a website called woodenergy.ie. I do not know whether the members are familiar with that but it is available to the public and offers advice to people in the supply chain on how best to source and use wood fuels. Working with the Irish BioEnergy Association we provide grant aid to the wood fuel quality assurance scheme, which is geared towards companies that want to reach a certain standard in their supply of wood fuels that would give assurance to the public on the quality of their fuels. We have a number of measures around the wood fuel area because we think it is an important area for future climate change mitigation.

The private sector is one area where there will be an increase in supply of forest materials over the next 20 years. We estimate that the current harvest of approximately 3 million m³ will increase to 6 million m³ by 2028 or 2029. Most of that increase will come from the private sector and a significant proportion will go to the energy side. It is important therefore that we have a good profile on the thinning of our private plantations and supplying it to the energy sector. This will lead to benefits, not just for the energy sector but for the wider forest sector in terms of material that will flow into sawmills and boardmills, because if one thins the plantations the trees grow to larger sizes. It is an integrated policy on the management of our forests regarding energy supply.

We will examine the sequestration side regarding the sectoral road map and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Because we have a young private forest sector that has been established in the last 20 years, this is taking much carbon out of the atmosphere. That will be an important element regarding the Department's sectoral plan.

The wood products aspect is important because substituting wood for other materials is an important long-term goal and we are working through the timber standards consultative committee of the National Standards Authority of Ireland on wood standards, putting in place various improvements in standards which would help to encourage the use of wood as a long-term replacement for energy-intensive materials.

We have the EPA figures and Teagasc also has its own projections. It should be borne in mind that some of them are pre-abatement. Teagasc has identified that there is abatement potential of up to 1.1 megatonnes, provided the most efficient practices are adopted but that needs more engagement by farmers to use these practices, which are not just environmentally effective but also economically effective.