Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 June 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Sectoral Emissions Ceilings: Discussion

Mr. Bill Callanan:

To be clear, we included within our financial ask that there be a commitment in terms of developing a pilot anaerobic digestion measure. A figure of €24 million was identified in terms of that ask and that was announced previously. We will look at what element of the marketplace we need to focus on in terms of that development because there are different scales of anaerobic digesters etc. out there. Ultimately, an anaerobic digester must live or die based on the economic return as well and that is an energy-driven policy because the market there focuses on energy displacement and energy replacement. One would have to broadly expect the change in energy value for gas to have a major impact in terms of that. It involves the cost of gas. We had looked at this before. This was a number of years ago in terms of the propositions I had seen. There was a huge differential between the cost of that natural gas and that of biomethane. It was roughly four times the cost. That gap has greatly narrowed because of the change in the overall energy costs system. It is massive. However, there is still that issue from an energy policy point of view. Is it sustainable from a cost point of view in terms of running anaerobic digestion? All I am saying is that this is an energy-driven policy.

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