GHG cloud hangs over Irish farming

Ireland stands out as the EU country facing by far the biggest challenge in reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, warned EU agricultural policy expert Alan Matthews, ahead of this weekend’s European heads of state meeting to decide the EU’s new climate and energy policy framework.

In his latest contribution to the capreform.eu blog, he has compiled an agricultural emissions ‘pain index’ for each country in meeting its 2030 requirement.

The EU28 average pain index is 22.9, but Ireland’s 60.6 makes it clear that we are a special case, because we have the largest share for agriculture of our total emissions; and the highest contribution of enteric fermentation to our agricultural emissions of any EU country.