Ms Carmel Kelleher:

That is okay. Thank you, Senator. Denmark and the Netherlands have sector-specific biogas frameworks, which is, first and foremost, why we are here today and looking to move along the commitment to planning legislation in the national biomethane strategy published in May 2024.

European countries that may have rushed into biomethane and larger plants have now reined back. Germany is an example. There are 10,000 biogas plants in Germany but only 2% are the large industrial type - 238 of that 10,000. The remainder are single digester tanks on farms. We look at that as a model. When Germany started, it focused on high-energy crops, especially maize. As a result, between 2010 and 2015 they experienced food shortages. They were once self-sufficient from a green production point of view. Because they were feeding anaerobic digestive plants with so much high-energy crops such as maize, they were no longer self-sufficient. Publicly, people noted this and policy in Germany changed to rein that in. From a lessons-in-Europe perspective, we would look to those countries.

Emissions are an issue. The leakages in Europe average approximately 14%. Anything above 8% is harmful to the environment. Denmark targets 1%. They are the good citizens-----