Mr. Trevor Donnellan:

I thank the joint committee for its invitation. In a short presentation I will take it through some of the work Teagasc has done in the area of greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector. It looks at what the emissions could be in the future and sets out a range of mitigation actions which, if employed, could reduce the emissions produced by the sector. I will skip through my first background slide which sets out the state of affairs with respect to agriculture's share of greenhouse gas emissions and with which I am sure the committee is familiar.

It is important to emphasise when looking to the future - I am referring to the years to 2030 - that the position in agriculture is quite uncertain. It is a sector heavily influenced by policy. When I refer to policy, to a large extent, I am referring to the Common Agricultural Policy. The sector is also heavily influenced by international demand. That is a particularly important issue for agriculture. On the key agricultural outputs, we export very large shares of dairy produce, beef, sheep and pigmeat. Exports account for a very high share of total production, which is unusual in a EU context. The level of activity in the sector is heavily driven by international considerations.

Acknowledging that uncertainty, we decided to look at six future scenarios for the level of agricultural activity and the associated emissions that will be produced by the sector. Given that most of the greenhouse gas emissions in Irish agriculture are generated by cattle, that is, in beef and dairy production, we centred our scenarios on different views of how the total cattle population could evolve and knowing what the total cattle population would be in different scenarios. In assessing them and the level of activity in other sectors of agriculture and the amount of nitrogen used, an important source of emissions, we can come up with a suite of projections for what the emissions from the sector will look like in the future before we take mitigation actions into consideration.

Reflecting on what I have said, I draw the committee's attention to the graph for the cattle population. I draw its attention to the relatively narrow vertical axis. There are a little over 7 million cattle in the country. We have produced projections for six scenarios which we have labelled Nos. 1 to 6. The key point to note is that we have projected a range of about 1 million head of cattle by the time we reach 2030. It is important to emphasise the current population is a little over 7 million. The most important scenario, the one about which I will talk most, is scenario 1. It is the central scenario in which the cattle population will increase to about 7.4 million in the period to 2030.

Why do we have these scenarios? We have them because we have based them on different possible evolutions of the dairy cow and suckler cow populations. They give us a spread of six potential outcomes. The reason we have done it is to emphasise that we cannot know with certainty what the total cattle population will be or what total emissions will be in agriculture. The same is true of any other sector of the economy and the associated level of emissions. It is an important point to note. If we take the six scenarios and factor in the emissions from other sectors of the economy, we can come up with six scenarios for the emissions that will be produced in the agriculture sector. There are some important figures to note on the graph. The figure for 2005 is the reference level of emissions relative to which we are trying to achieve by way of a reduction in emissions by 2030. All six scenarios show emissions increasing relative to where they are. In all six emissions are higher than they were in 2005. The key point that needs to be made is that the six scenarios and the levels of emissions exclude mitigation actions. It is before we take into consideration actions that could be taken in the agriculture sector to address the emissions. We have identified about 25 actions that could be taken to address them.

That is not the final outcome. Other key figures to note are the 10% and 20% reductions in emissions relative to the figure for 2005. If we take the figures and put them in tabular format, we can see the associated percentage changes in emissions.

The most relevant is probably the one in the second last column for 2030 versus 2005. As members can see, under all of the scenarios shown, the level of emissions would be higher than it would have been in 2005. Again, the caveat here is that this is before we take into consideration the mitigation actions.

I will home in on scenario one, which is the central scenario across the six scenarios we have looked at. In that context, we are talking about a 9% increase in emissions relative to 2005 by 2030. This is without mitigation being taken into consideration. We then identified three mitigation pathways, three ways in which we can address the emissions being produced by the agriculture sector. The first of those was to reduce the methane and nitrous oxide emissions produced by the agriculture sector. This would involve lowering the emissions produced by animals, animal waste and the application of synthetic fertilisers. The second mitigation pathway is sequestering carbon, which, in large part, involves increased afforestation. The third mitigation pathway is energy efficiency, biofuels and bioenergy. It mainly involves biofuels and bioenergy production. In other words, we want to reduce the overall energy usage on farms. I caution that energy usage on farms is a relatively small share of the total emissions produced by agriculture. The focus in this area is on biofuel and bioenergy production and what farmers could do that would result in the displacement of fossil fuel emissions.

We produced three associated marginal abatement cost curves, MACCs. It is easier to focus on the figures on the right, rather than dwelling on the detail on the left. The key point about these three marginal abatement cost curves is that very few of the individual measures are large in size. We have identified those that are large in size in yellow for the benefit of members. In the three marginal abatement cost curves we can see that many of the measures are small in size. This reflects the fact that there is no silver bullet to address emissions being produced by the agriculture sector. We will need to continue to attack this issue from a whole range of angles. The first of the two key figures shown is the dairy economic breeding index, EBI, which is geared to producing dairy cows that have superior performance. That is one of the ways we can address methane emissions produced by dairy cows. The second key figure is on changing the fertiliser type that is used. We can change to fertilisers that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

When we take into account the mitigation I just outlined in terms of methane and nitrous oxide emissions, we can see what this does to the curve in the future. Members can see a projection out to 2030 in the absence of any mitigation, which would see the emission level for the agriculture sector to 20.5 million tonnes. We also have the mitigation that we identified which brings the figure to 7% below the 2005 level, as opposed to 9% above that level, by 2030. I should emphasise a point of which members are probably aware. While the focus of my submission is 2030, progress towards the 2030 target has to be achieved on an annual basis. We cannot continue as we are until 2029 and achieve all the mitigation in 2030. The way the system works is that countries are basically assessed in terms of emission reductions from 2021 through to 2030. This also highlights that early action on mitigation is particularly useful because it is important to get onto a good pathway towards achieving the 2030 target. This is the mitigation associated with methane and nitrous oxide emissions produced by the agriculture sector.

Figure 2 is the MACC associated with land use sequestration. The main source of emission reductions within this category is forestry. I should have emphasised in my previous point that we are looking at the mean level of mitigation, that is, the average level of mitigation achieved between 2021 and 2030. This will ultimately be what our success will be measured against in respect of addressing greenhouse gas emission reductions. A key point is that forestry is, by a long distance, the most significant sequestration source. This is based on planting rates for forestry of about 7,000 ha per year. Ireland's planting or afforestation rate is only about 4,000 ha per year at the moment. We are, therefore, below target and even below the assumption we are making for the purposes of this exercise. Forestry is a long-term game. While we are thinking about targets for 2020 and 2030, we should probably also have in our minds targets that will exist beyond that point, out to 2040 and 2050. Having trees in place in the short term would have significant benefits in the longer term beyond 2030. That is an important point.

Figure 3 is the MACC for energy efficiency, bioenergy and biofuels. The energy efficiency component is relatively small. I mentioned already that energy emissions by the agriculture sector are not particularly significant as a share of the total emissions produced by the sector. The largest single contributor here is wood biomass for energy. This covers thinnings from forestry and some residues used to produce electricity and fuel for heat.

When we accumulate all of these mitigation actions together, the summary figure shows the mean level of mitigation and the level of mitigation by the time we reach 2030. We can also see the figures on the level of emissions before mitigation is considered. That is the first significant row of figures on the slide. Taking all of these into consideration, the agriculture sector could be producing a total level of mitigation of some 7.7 million tonnes by 2030. It is important to emphasise, however, that the final category on energy mitigation would not be credited to agriculture on the basis of the way the accounting system works for the greenhouse gas inventory.

On the costs associated with mitigation, most of the mitigation actions we have identified cost less than €50 per tonne to achieve. That is just our assumption for the purposes of this exercise as to what the cost of carbon would be. We could also say that the agriculture mitigation, which is the first of the three categories of mitigation I referred to, is generally cheaper to achieve than the mitigation associated with land use and bioenergy production. On the figures for costs, there is considerable uncertainty around bioenergy in particular. It is very difficult to determine the extent to which farmers will be interested in moving into bioenergy. For this reason, we are less confident in respect of the figure we have produced for bioenergy production than we are in respect of the other figures in the presentation.

This submissions is the product of contributions by about 20 individuals. I am just a spokesperson and I will endeavour to answer questions to the best of my ability but I am sure there will be some on which I will have respond in writing.