Professor John Sweeney:

Yes. Apart from methane leakage, the possibility of scaling up biomethane, for example, is limited. The target of replacing around 10% of Ireland's fossil gas with biomethane by 2030 is a challenging target. Teagasc has estimated this would require 120,000 ha of grassland and 20% of all winter slurry produced in Ireland. That is a huge commitment. The other side of the coin is that 1 ha of solar panels will in a year produce 100 times as much energy as the same area devoted to bio-energy. There is an easy solution here and we should not be trapped into going a very long way around to get that extra renewable energy.