Dr. John Curtis:

Everything Deputy Stanley said is true. I previously worked with the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and one of my work projects was to try to encourage anaerobic digestion for all the areas the Deputy spoke about such as emissions capture, water quality improvements, dealing with waste from the food sector and so on.

The Department has stated that the cost of producing this biogas is more than the cost of fossil fuel at present. If a plant is set up, the cost recovery for profit is not there. Something needs to drive it to make it more cost competitive. One way to do that is through a carbon tax, when the profitability of these plants, versus natural gas production, will improve.

In terms of the sector, I mentioned earlier that farmers in beef production regard it as a vocation. They do not want to move away from what they do but, on average, beef farmers are producing beef at a loss. It is a matter of trying to encourage them to diversify their activities. It is not to stop beef farming but to move into diversification by being energy producers as well. The skeleton in the closet, so to speak, is that 30% of emissions are from agriculture. The real pinch on that sector may come when they have to try to reduce that, but that is a matter for another day.