Dr. Laurence Shalloo:

I will respond here. The question is whether agriculture can be climate-neutral by 2050 and what role energy will play in that. Looking at the overall emissions of a dairy farm, for example, energy plays a pretty small role in that. In the carbon footprint only about 1.5% comes from energy, that is, electricity. To become climate neutral by 2050 there is a massive job to be done but there are other things that will have to form part of that, for example, how methane is treated in the calculations. Its lifetime will have to be part of the calculations to become climate neutral. I do not think anyone argues with the science around that. Methane is one part of it. Obviously, there will have to be significant reductions in nitrous oxide through changing fertiliser type from calcium ammonium nitrate, or CAN, based fertilisers to urea-based fertilisers and protected urea fertilisers, for example. That will form a second part. The third part, which will be hugely important, is the removals. Getting appropriate emission factors for the removals in terms of sequestration on mineral soils and losses through peat soils will form the third pillar in how climate-neutral looks for agriculture by 2050.