Mr. Declan Murray:

As members will be aware from reading the opening statements, BioCore Environmental Ltd is here specifically to talk about the role biomethane can play in decarbonising the economy and providing some security in our energy supply. The benefits we see going forward are the integration with the agricultural side of the community and how we can deliver savings to both the farmer and the producers and consumers of electricity. We have looked at some of the regulations as they changed in Europe. As we look forward we will see some changes coming in Ireland. I am specifically thinking of a recent decision in the European Parliament that all wastewater treatment sludges are to go to anaerobic digestion, AD, where possible. We have a million tonnes of that in Ireland. We need to get our biomethane industry up and working to make sure we are in a position to deal with all of that.

A number of issues are happening on the farming side of the house where our spread window is getting narrower and the storage window gets longer. Farmers are having difficulties with what they are putting out on their land and how much they can put out. We believe that the anaerobic digestion industry can offer a mutually beneficial arrangement to farmers whereby we can take in slurries and probably pay for grass sileage or some sort of crops such as that and then provide them with fertiliser at a time of the year when it is important for them to put out fertiliser rather than at a time of year when they have to put it out because all their slurry tanks are full from long winters. Some of the rain we had in past few months has brought that home to roost, particularly in the west where our plant operates.

The benefits from AD do not stop there. We have a number of ongoing trials on our organic fertiliser or digest data. At the back end of our plant, Mr. Macken, who is here with me, has run a couple of crops at this stage using no chemical fertilisers whatsoever and using purely AD. We believe we need to get to a point where the regulations governing the use of slurry as an import and digestate as an export need to be brought in line with the current legislation that exists throughout the rest of Europe where there are standards for digestate. If we reach those standards, it will become accepted as a class A biosolid fertiliser. We have a fairly unique situation in Ireland where a farmer can take a tank of slurry from his slurry pit, put it out on the field, and that is fine. However, the minute he drives out the gate and brings it to me in an AD it becomes a waste. That makes no sense. Indeed it causes problems for farmers. A number of farmers, particularly throughout the past number of wet winters, turned up at the plant asking whether we can take some stuff in. Where we can help, we help. However, a plant of our size in County Roscommon should be able to take in 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes of slurry every year and process it through the plant.

Finally, I bring the attention of members to the difficulties we have seen in price rises for our gases. We have to import almost all our gas. I am sure the representatives from Gas Networks Ireland will back that up. It comes in from abroad bar the bit from the Kinsale gas field. With a fully supported industry, we could provide 20% of the requirements for the gas network in Ireland over five to ten years. Looking at this in terms of how much energy bills have increased in the past year for residential customers, to generate a 20% saving on that, it would not be a huge amount of investment by the State to get the fully funded AD industry up and running. We recently had talks about a 50:50 co-investment scheme to get some ADs built. That is welcome. We look forward to that being crystallised and getting the industry to a standard and a volume where it can make a real difference to providing energy for the country. The interesting thing about biomethane is that it is one of the few naturally produced products that can be stored as a gas. It can be used as a gas. It can be upgraded to go into the national grid. However, it can also be used as a transport fuel. Road transport is one of the hardest areas to decarbonise in any country. Natural gas, biomethane compressed into compressed biomethane can reduce the carbon footprint of a truck by 85%.

On behalf of BioCore, I thank the committee for this opportunity today. I am happy to answer any questions as they arise.