Twenty per cent of the country’s winter cattle slurry will be needed to feed anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in the coming years, Teagasc’s Fiona Thorne has said. Speaking at the launch of the new MACC this week, the research officer outlined how there is a target of 5.7terawatt hours (TWh) in the Climate Action Plan.

“If we are to meet that with anaerobic digestion, we need 150 or 200 AD plants across the country. That is a very significant target. We need about 120,000ha of feedstocks [such as] grass silage. We need to look in the context of the renewable energy directive and how we’re going to produce that silage.

“What is often overlooked is the amount of slurry that we need going into these AD plants, if they are going to be co-fed with silage and slurry. To reach that 5.7TWh we also need 20% of the winter slurry from the cattle in the country to meet those targets,” she said.

She also said that it will not be easy for the country to reach the 5.7TWh target.

“There’s economic issues that need to be considered, there’s environmental issues and there’s social sustainability considerations,” she said.