Mr. Stephen McCormack:

The Irish Bioenergy Association was established in 1999 as the representative body for the bioenergy sector on the island of Ireland. Our members and work span the sustainable bioenergy sectors of biomass, biogas, biofuels, biochar, energy crops and wood fuels. Our biogas and biomethane members cover the full supply chain and include farmers, feedstock suppliers, project developers, technology providers, energy users and a large number of service providers to the sector. IrBEA is an active and proud member of the European Biogas Association. The biomethane sector is mainstream across Europe and worldwide, while the sector's potential in Ireland has not been realised yet. There are over 20,000 operational anaerobic digestion plants around the EU and several million across the world. Favourable policy measures are driving the development of the industry across Europe. Ireland is far behind our EU counterparts in policy development terms and using this technology, with currently around 15 biogas plants operating in Ireland. Anaerobic digestion technology is used broadly across the wastewater treatment and processing sectors as a mainstream, reliable and mature technology. Various EU reports have indicated that Ireland per capita has one of the highest potential capacities for biomethane across Europe. Many Irish reports on biomethane feedstock availability also confirm this potential. One example is the recent report completed by the Southeast Energy Agency under the Interreg Regency project. There are many opportunities at all scales for the use of anaerobic digestion technology. In Ireland, we are seeing the deployment of anaerobic digestion technology at all scales, including micro scale, which processes domestic food waste to produce biogas for domestic cooking use. Small farm-scale uses slurries and farmyard manures to produce biogas to offset existing fossil-based energy sources on the farm and large-scale developments use a variety of feedstocks from many sources. The regulatory and support requirements are hugely different depending on the scale.