The mood music on biomethane and anaerobic digestion wasn’t good at this week’s climate change conference. Some of the speakers suggested there is lower hanging fruit that is getting more focus by researchers in the short term.

As Marie Donnelly said it is planned to be 10% of our energy sector going forward and we still have no biomethane policy. The use of methane inhibitors looks set to be rolled out on the 100 or so Signpost farms this winter.

Unlike our European competitors that are mainly housing stock indoors and can benefit more from feeding this inhibitor, Ireland typically has maybe a four month winter on average.

This means that we can’t attain the full 30% emission reduction, but as the Climate Change Advisory Council chairperson Marie Donnelly said: ‘if we get a quarter of the 30% reduction, then we’ll take that”.