Mr. P.J. McCarthy:

As some of the Deputy's other questions have been answered, I will pick up on his question about the critical mass needed in Ireland. Through industry collaboration by Gas Networks Ireland, GNI, Devenish and KPMG, they have established that there are 768,000 ha of underutilised pasture lands. For clarity, this excludes hillsides, special areas of conservation, SACs, and areas of high biodiversity value. The optimum scale of AD plant that we are promoting, which is 20 GWh, would require slightly less than 500 ha of land to supply the sustainable feedstock.

If we do the maths, we can see there is an opportunity to pursue 9.5 TWh of biomethane production from the sustainable feedstock and available landmass. This is before we even consider other innovative technologies. A national network of anaerobic digestion biomethane plants would be complementary to biorefineries and the biocircular economy. A national network of anaerobic digestion plants would also provide the additional opportunity of pursuing biohydrogen. With regard to critical mass we will hem ourselves in if we look at this as having one dimension. We have a significant opportunity to push ourselves to go even higher with complementary technologies. MaREI has produced figures showing that we could produce as much as 18 TWh of renewable gas in this country before we really tap into hydrogen at scale. Along with being an exporter of renewable electricity to Europe there is a significant opportunity for Ireland to be a net exporter of renewable gas in the long term if we do it right.