Ms Marie Donnelly:

I thank the Vice Chairman for those questions. Starting with microgeneration, the Vice Chairman put his finger on the most important part of it, which is that it allows everybody to participate in this exercise. It might be only a few panels on the roof of a shed, house or local school, but it allows people to become involved and feel they are taking part in this exercise. It also introduces people to the concept of electricity. Having spent many years in energy, I still find myself being confused between kW, kWh, GW, TW and whatever. It is a new language and methodology of speaking. It is helpful for people to start to understand that because ultimately it will be the energy vector and we need to be able to manage it.

The opportunity of microgeneration on rooftops is so attractive now because of the reduced cost of the technology. Over the past ten years, the cost of solar panels has reduced by more than 100%. The advantage is you have them installed and they are like a light bulb. They do their thing and you do not have to do anything. In that context, buy-in is hugely important.

On targets, an interesting issue that came out of the recent EirGrid consultation on shaping our future electricity system was that EirGrid started from a premise of zero power from microgeneration and at the end of the consultation, it has now factored in 500 MW from microgeneration, such was the level of interest expressed during the consultation. That is about 400,000 homes in Ireland wanting to put panels on their roofs. It is the equivalent of the two gas-fired power stations that were out of action during this year that caused all of the amber alerts. It is a significant quantity, in addition to the attraction of allowing people to become involved.

Microgeneration is a very important aspect of delivering on our journey in respect of participation and delivering on renewable electricity.

If I do not answer everything, the Vice Chairman might let me know and I will come back to it. On LULUCF, the surprise he expressed was shared by the council when we started to conduct the analysis on this. It came as something of a shock that our forest system was in such a bad condition. It is due to the decline in planting rates. We have had national targets of about 8,000 ha of new planting for forests every year for the past ten years, and we have not achieved that target in any year. We are currently at a level of about 2,000 ha or 2,500 ha. What has happened is we have not replenished our forestry and allowed it to build up. Over a period, as a tree gets older, it can absorb more CO2 but at a certain point it will be ready to be felled and replanted. The absence of doing that, consistently over recent years, leads us to having somewhere between 8% and 11% of our land covered by forests. In other parts of Europe, the figure is at least 20%, and higher in some countries.

In our technical report, we have examined and included the kinds of numbers and rates of replanting our forests that would need to be achieved to put us on a pathway to net zero by 2050. We are looking at increasing very substantially the replanting rate. By doing so, we would get to perhaps 18% to 20% coverage of our land by 2030 or 2035. As members will see in the papers that have gone to the Minister, this is a biophysical process. It cannot be sped up, given it is nature and it will take its own time. Planting a tree today is essential but it will not remove emissions in its early years. That will happen only as we get into the 2030s. Nevertheless, it is important there be an incentive for people to move. We have suggested to the Minister to consider forward-counting some of those emissions. Of course, they would have to be deducted later, given we cannot double-count, but it is important there be incentives for sectors to move forward. If all the effort in this decade leads to nothing, it will be difficult to have that as an incentive. We have set out a possibility, should the Government and the Department wish to choose it.

On agriculture, the pathways Teagasc has identified will deliver significant results and that is for sure. Not only will they deliver results in a climate sense but many of the methods and proposals it has come forward with and researched improve the quality of farming, the productivity of our farms and the returns to farmers. There is a challenge and it is not just in the agricultural sector; indeed, it is in all parts of society. It relates to how quickly new technologies and methodologies can be disseminated and taken up by people. How fast can we roll out a system of low-emission slurry-spreading, LESS? How quickly can that happen on all farms in the country? How quickly can we move forward with a change in fertiliser to, say, protected urea? Frankly, with the cost of fertiliser today, that might actually happen much faster than we had expected. Part of these new approaches are about dissemination and adoption by farmers, and that will be the very important first steps agriculture will have to take, as other sectors will also have to do.

Anaerobic digestion is an important technology we have not yet really used in Ireland. It is a technology used in other parts of Europe and it is very successful. It is not a new technology; it has been well demonstrated and it operates in a commercial sense. It presents opportunities in Ireland. It is potentially a new income stream for farmers, who may choose to diversify into that space, and it presents an opportunity to have the circular economy notion, whereby we use our land to produce bioenergy in a sustainable way and then use that for the hard-to-decarbonise sectors, whether for transport or high temperature heat in our industrial processing sectors. It presents a real opportunity for us but, as with any new technology being adopted in a country, it will require Government supports to set it up and to put it on its way in its early years. It is an important area and it should be examined in more detail.