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A top-up premium of 25% should be paid on renewable energy generated by farms and community scale enterprises, the IFA has said.
This would apply to enterprises that are generating energy predominantly for their own use.
The IFA’s renewables team presented its policy to the IFA national council on Tuesday. It proposes that microscale renewable enterprises should also get priority access to the national grid.
“The farmer can be part of the solution … communities will gain, rural Ireland will gain – but it will be expensive,” IFA renewables chair Tom Short said.
“Farmers will never have scale but rural Ireland will be nothing without farmers so you have to incentivise farmers to produce food and renewable energy. But it’s not going to be as cheap as we’ve been used to in fossil fuel terms.”
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