Will biogas sort out Ireland's decarbonisation needs, or will it just leave a bad smell?
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Touted as a step on the road to Ireland’s decarbonisation goals, biomethane has the potential to turn waste byproducts from agriculture, the food industry, and even from sewage treatment plants into a potent source of new energy.
A new national biomethane strategy published in May has set an ambitious target of 10% of our current natural gas needs from renewable sources by 2030, which would require the creation of up to 200 biomethane plants in just six years.
This would represent a true biogas boom: At present, there are just two biomethane plants connected to the Irish gas network, injecting 25GWh, or 0.001% of current gas demand, into the national grid.
Ireland’s hitherto untapped 180m tonnes of annual agricultural waste, and the facilitative framework set out by the national methane strategy has numerous investors scrambling to get into the Irish biogas market early.
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But in the absence of clear regulation on where large biogas facilities can be located, local community groups opposed to commercial scale biomethane plants in their areas are springing up at almost the same rate as sites are being proposed.
One such group is Macroom Biogas Concern Group, which formed earlier this year. They say that the site of a former piggery in Kilvoultra, outside Macroom, Co Cork, is the wrong place for a 90,000 tonne commercial biomethane facility proposed by Nephin Renewable Gas (NRG) Ltd.
One of Macroom Biogas Concern Group’s founders, Carmel Kelleher, grew up in a farming family in Kilvoultra. She and her husband built a house on her parents’ dairy farm, where the couple, both accountants, live with their four children.
The first mention she heard of a potential biomethane plant 250m from her home was when her parents told her that they had a visit from a representative of a biogas company, NRG Ltd, in January 2024.
Some neighbours had been visited and told that NRG Ltd were considering putting in a planning application for a commercial biomethane facility on the site of the former piggery, which has been disused for the past decade.
No planning application has been made in Macroom to date, although NRG has lodged applications for similar sized plants in Ballinrobe, Co Mayo and Carrick-on-Suir, Co Waterford and is investigating multiple other sites.
Ms Kelleher and her husband heard no more about it for several months, until a chance conversation with another neighbour who also seemed to know a lot about the plans while they were out walking on a summer’s evening in August 2024.
This triggered the couple to start reading up on biomethane facilities: They quickly discovered that the piggery site had been sold to NRG a year earlier, in August 2023, and that a company called Nephin Renewable Gas Macroom Ltd was one of 12 Nephin companies registered with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) earlier, in June 2023.
On top of her many concerns regarding a potential commercial biomethane plant near her home, Ms Kelleher said the manner in which information has been given to the community has been “handled completely wrongly”. She added:
“It has already been divisive because it is not transparent at all. There is just speculation. The rumour mill is going hammer and tongs,” she said.
Having met with NRG’s rep at her home in September, Ms Kelleher set about organising a public meeting herself, which the NRG rep did not attend.
Nephin Renewable Gas Ltd told the via a PR agency that individual meetings with all households and businesses within a 1km radius of a proposed site is their standard practice.
“We have found this one-to-one approach to be very effective at other sites and ensures that all individuals that we engage with have the opportunity to voice their opinions,” their press spokesperson said.
“Where concerns are raised, we will do our best assuage them and if needed adjust the design and layout of the facility to alleviate these concerns.
"We ensure that all property owners are visited and consulted prior to submission of the planning application.”
Macroom Biogas Concern Group cites inadequate road infrastructure for HGVs, air quality and odour concerns, explosion risks, and water quality concerns as reasons why NRG Ltd should not be allowed to build the biomethane plant in Kilvoultra.
And they believe that if the government’s biomethane strategy had included regulations on how close a plant can be built to human habitation, it would not even have been considered in the first place.
“We’d prefer if it didn’t even go to planning,” Ms Kelleher said.
“You have to bring in professional people from the start, planning consultants, legal advice and other expertise.
"We think we have a strong case, but the cost of that will be a huge amount for a community to raise when we are in a cost-of-living crisis, all because a corporation is getting away with making an unsuitable application because there are no guidelines.
“It’s frustrating. I shouldn’t be having to arrange public meetings and doing all this time-consuming stuff: I have four children.
"Some neighbours have already pulled back because it was impacting their mental health. It would be easy for government to look at best practice in other EU countries and put guidelines in place.”
The national biomethane strategy published in May includes five essential pillars for developing a biomethane industry in Ireland:
- Sustainability;
- Demand for biomethane;
- Bioeconomy and circular economy;
- Economics of biomethane;
- Enabling policy requirements.
Industry regulation is not one of these pillars, and the strategy outlines no limits on where plants can be built.
In October, Housing and Local Government Minister Darragh O’Brien told the Dáil that “there are no specific requirements set out under planning policy and legislation in relation to anaerobic digestors, therefore it is a matter for the relevant planning authority to consider each application on a case by case basis".
A government biomethane implementation group has been formed, and “will develop guidelines to support planning authorities when assessing planning applications for anaerobic digesters and biorefineries,” Mr O’Brien said.
For industry proponents and for investors, the national biomethane strategy represents clear backing for an industry with enormous potential.
“Biomethane offers a powerful tool to help decarbonise the energy sector, particularly for difficult to abate sectors,” NRG’s press spokesperson said.
“It is one of the most versatile forms of renewable energy and the only form of ‘always on’ renewable energy, unlike wind and solar.
"It can be deployed in a variety of sectors including transport, heating, and electricity generation.”
NRG say the benefits of biomethane production can include jobs for the rural economy, a reliable income stream for farmers, decarbonising agriculture through the capture of gases from slurry and manure, and a biological fertiliser byproduct known as digestate which could have benefits over chemical fertilisers.
However, for Carmel Kelleher, a model based on commercial interests without a strict government regulatory frame work is a recipe for disaster.
She cites Timoleague Agrigen Ltd, one of the only functioning biogas facilities in the country, which has been beset by EPA licence breaches for multiple years: In 2021, the company was number one on the EPA’s annual watch list.
For Ms Kelleher, it’s the model based on profit that stinks. She said other EU models in which anaerobic digesters are farm-based and serve just a small number of farms operating as a co-op is one with inbuilt checks and balances.
There is serious mistrust as to what large plants will accept as feedstock, and what the resulting digestate that farmers contracted to the companies will spread on their land contains, she said.
“That kind of structure where farmers are responsible for what goes in and what comes out, I would be very supportive of and comfortable with,” she said.
“A corporation setting up an industrial-scale plant is concerning.
"For them, it has to make money and they will feed it with whatever is profitable.
Some of the applications currently in progress around the country include listings of sewage sludge as a feedstock, giving rise to concerns about the presence of everything from antibiotic residues to contraceptive hormones in the digestate fertiliser.
NRG Ltd say it has no plans to include sewage sludge as a feedstock in their planning application for Macroom, and they haven’t included it in their planning applications to date in Ballinrobe and Carrick-on Suir.
“In our opinion, sewage sludge should be managed in dedicated facilities to ensure that plant design and operating conditions are optimised to take account of the physical and chemical nature of this challenging material,” NRG’s press representative told the .
NRG Ltd is just one company among several that are in the process of investing in biomethane plants in Ireland.
In October, EU company CycleØ announced plans to invest €100m in four Irish plants in Kildare, Cavan, Galway, and Limerick.
Not all plans are as fresh as this year’s spate of applications and announcements, though.
In Gort, Co Galway, an application by Sustainable Bioenergy Ltd for a 95,000 tonne, 22-acre plant within a kilometre of the town centre and just 10 metres away from the River Gort has already become a six-year planning and legal saga.
This summer, the developers went to the High Court and were granted a remittal after An Bord Pleanála earlier conceded in a judicial review taken by Gort Biogas Concern Group.
The remittal means that the plant developers, who also run Glenmore Biogas plant in Ballybofey, Co Donegal, have essentially reset the clock, with a fresh planning inspection and Bord Pleanála decision now due on the same planning application.
There is a note of frustration in Ciaran O’Donnell’s voice when he outlines the current state of play.
“This is a boon for the developers because it costs them nothing and it gives them another roll of the dice,” said Mr O’Donnell, one of the founders of Gort Biogas Concern Group.
“The judge waved a magic wand and put us back to where we were in February 2020 before An Bord Pleanála conceded.
“We were given a chance to respond and we did. Our last submission was this 265-page document with input from some amazing people involved, from electronic engineers to pharmacists, and now we just wait. It could be six months, or if could be two years.”
Mr O’Donnell, who works as a marine biologist and has lived in the Gort area for 20 years, is keen to stress that the opposition in Gort is not nimbyism and that the group are not against biogas facilities per se.
“A lot of us in the group work in environment: We see the need to decarbonise and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels,” he said.
“But biomethane technology is by no means a silver bullet when it becomes a money-making strategy.
"It’s not going to fix our reliance on fossil fuels and I think people are being sold a bit of a pup if they think it is.
“This plant is not even designed to connect to the gas network so everything would have to be trucked in and everything trucked out. How is that sustainable?”
Having been campaigning against a biomethane plant for six years, Gort Biogas Concern Group are now considered veterans and have been approached by numerous other newer groups for advice, as well as contributing to a white paper by environmental NGO Feedback EU.
The publication of the national biomethane strategy in May has been greeted by the Gort group without enthusiasm, according to Mr O’Donnell.
“It’s developer-led and profit-driven,” he said.
“I actually had to get in touch with them and tell them I wanted to make a longer submission.”
As with Carmel Kelleher in Macroom, Ciaran O’Donnell has serious concerns about the lack of specific industry regulations in Ireland, and the lag between the national biomethane strategy and any guidelines that may eventually be recommended by the biomethane implementation group, whose makeup has not been made public yet, six months after the publication of the strategy, even as multiple planning applications are being made. He said:
“If the Government wants to take this seriously, they need to vet the developers, create guidelines about where plants can be situated, and engage with local communities.
"Then people might have a bit more confidence in it, because now, everyone’s hackles are up.”
- Feedstock in the form of organic wastes (which can include slurry, animal manure, brown bin waste, agricultural green waste, abattoir waste, food industry wastes, and sludge from sewage treatment) are collected from sources, transported to the plant and mixed.
- A primary treatment tank allows bacteria to anaerobically digest the wastes, causing gases to be released.
- Biogases from the primary tank and another secondary treatment tank are refined, creating biomethane and carbon dioxide.
- The biomethane is fed into the national grid.
- Carbon dioxide is liquified and can be used for a variety of commercial uses.
- The contents of the secondary treatment tank are pasteurised and separated into solid fertiliser and liquid fertiliser.
- Residual water is treated with filtration and reverse osmosis for clean water discharge.
- Fertilisers are sent back to contracted farmers who have provided the feedstock to be spread on their land.