There must be an urgent push this year to progress the Climate Action Plan target of an 80-90% replacement of CAN fertiliser with protected urea, according to the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC).
This should be done by using available instruments, such as “taxation, regulation and incentives” to overcome technical and behavioural barriers to uptake, it said.
Pushing farmers to use more protected urea is one of 10 recommendations that the CCAC has made in its annual review of the agriculture and land use sector.
It has also said that the Department of Agriculture should set targets for each year for the deployment of methane-reducing manure additives and that these targets should be included in the Climate Action Plan 2026.
The CCAC has called on the Government to finalise and publish phase two of the Land Use Review, which it says is urgently needed to inform strategies for land use that support improved socioeconomic, climate, biodiversity, and water and air quality outcomes.
“These strategies should set out clear timelines, resource and training needs, and implementation responsibilities for Department of Agriculture and other relevant agencies,” it added.
Forestry
Urgent action and strengthened policy levers are needed to incentivise tree planting in Ireland, the CCAC has advised.
It has said this is to ensure Ireland’s forestry sector does not become a source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The council found that the current afforestation policy is inadequate to meet the country's future needs as tree planting rates are below the target of 8,000ha per year.
Marie Donnelly, chair of the CCAC said: “What we have seen in the sector is a failure of policy, with schemes to incentivise more planting not delivering the results required. This has been exacerbated by the damage to forests during the winter with storms Darragh and Éowyn which resulted in over 26,000ha damaged by windthrow.
“We need a policy from Government that will actively encourage afforestation in the areas most suited to planting. The council is concerned about plans to plant on deep peatlands, with all evidence suggesting that this leads to significant carbon losses over time. Therefore, it is essential that the current constraints on afforestation on deep peat remain unchanged and are rigorously enforced," Donnelly has said.
Diversification
The Department of Agriculture should lead in setting annualised targets and roadmaps for the deployment of diversification options, including targets for bioenergy, organic production systems, expanding tillage, biodiversity restoration, and increasing afforestation and agroforestry, in the Climate Action Plan 2026, the CCAC recommended.
It added that the implementation of the National Biomethane Strategy has been “piecemeal to date, leading to a worryingly low level of interest in progressing this mitigation option”.
The council has said that immediate action is required, across the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Enterprise and the Department of Climate, to complete the implementation of the suite of policy tools identified in the strategy in order to build investor confidence and incentivise investment, to ensure that demand for biomethane is robust and that production capacity is built up to meet demand.