Methane reduction progress 'challenging, but expected to accelerate' in coming years

Frank Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis, has described methane as being the “fast and furious GHG". Picture: UC Davis

Progress on reducing methane emissions from agriculture is “challenging, but expected to accelerate” as feed additives become commercially available in future years, Bill Callanan, chief inspector at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has said.

Speaking at an Oireachtas environment and climate action committee meeting, he said that the 51% reduction target in greenhouse gas emissions on an economy-wide basis by 2030 is “extremely ambitious”, and the agriculture and land-use sectors “will be required to play their part in meeting Ireland’s climate ambition”.

Mr Callanan stressed to the committee: “We’re not holding out in relation to a silver bullet. That would be a misrepresentation of the level of challenge needed at individual farm level to change practices.

“It’s a whole series of actions, for example, it’s reducing fertiliser, changing fertiliser type for the remainder, it’s about earlier slaughter of animals, breeding strategies and how to deliver those.

“Feeding is just one component.”

He said that the policy approach for agriculture is structured around “three pillars”.

The first is to “continue to reduce emissions, using the best science and best agricultural practices”.

“Secondly, we must continue to sequester carbon and increase our avoidance of emissions through increased afforestation and better land management practices,” Mr Callanan said.

“Thirdly, we must make a contribution to sustainable energy and displacement of fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials.”

For the agriculture and land-use sector, delivery will be “extremely challenging”, Mr Callanan said in his submission to the committee.

“From a technical point of view, within a stable herd scenario, there is a limit to achievability and higher ambition would require changes in animal numbers,” he said.

“In particular, there are significant challenges around the reduction of methane within our pasture-based livestock production system and we welcome the fact that the second five-year carbon budget is aligned with the current technology constraints in this regard.”

Climate Action Plan

The Climate Action Plan 2021 sets the target of a 22% to 30% reduction in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

“This means that agriculture emissions need to reduce to between 16 to 18m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2 equivalent) in 2030 — an absolute reduction of between five to seven Mt CO2 equivalent,” Mr Callanan said.

“The 2021 plan identifies a series of core and further measures that can deliver a landing point at the upper end of the range assigned of 16-18Mt CO2 equivalent whilst remaining within the context of a broadly stable herd, a herd of approximately seven million animals.”

Mr Callanan said that the set of core measures will “introduce significant change” to the approach to farming.

“It prioritises early action within the first five-year carbon budget on reducing nitrous oxide emissions in agriculture which are mainly associated with the use of chemical nitrogen fertiliser,” he explained.

“A national fertiliser register of compliance, requiring primary legislation, will be developed and reductions in chemical nitrogen allowances under the Nitrates Regulations will help achieve our objectives as will support such as training and advisory services to underpin this transition.”

Progress on methane is “more challenging”, he said, but “expected to accelerate within the second five-year carbon budget as methane reducing feed additives become commercially available”.

“Even a 3% reduction in methane emissions from the Irish livestock herd over the decade would ensure no additional global warming arises from this farming activity,” Mr Callanan told the committee.

The Environmental Protection Agency said in its projections recently that methane emissions will need to reduce by up to 30% to meet the lower range of the 2021 Climate Action Plan target for agriculture.

Mr Callanan noted that Ireland is a signatory to the Global Methane Pledge “through which the EU has committed to cutting emissions from agriculture (biogenic methane) by 10% and cutting methane emissions from non-agricultural sources (such as landfills and some forms of energy production) by 50%”.

“Our national commitments now far exceed this,” he added.

Nonetheless, Mr Callanan said, measures taken to reduce emissions “will only take the sector so far”.

“It will never achieve zero emissions status because as long as we produce food, fuel or fibre, emissions will result,” he said. “This complexity is reflected in the Climate Act which refers explicitly to the social and economic role that Irish agriculture plays in society.”

Fast and furious GHG

Frank Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis, has described methane as being the “fast and furious GHG — furious because it has a strong heat-trapping effect, but fast because methane doesn’t live very long”.

He told the recent AGM of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland that in previous times, many outlets said: “anything that produces methane is a problem”.

He said with methane depicted “as CO2 on steroids”, it is seen as “simply a more powerful GHG and that being the end of the story — but it’s not”.

While methane is produced, Mr Mitloehner said it is “also destroyed and because of that, methane has a much shorter lifespan” than other GHGs.

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For example, CO2 has a lifespan of up to 1,000 years in the atmosphere compared to around 12 for methane. However, per unit, methane is also around 20 times more potent than CO2 in terms of its global warming potential.

“CO2 is such a problem because it’s so long-living. It’s less potent per molecule, but it lives pretty much forever,” Mr Mitloehner said.

He explained that “if you have a constant source of methane, then the amount of methane produced and the amount destroyed are roughly in balance”.

“A constant source of methane does not add additional warming to the planet,” Mr Mitloehner said.

“A near-constant source of methane has a constant amount of warming as a result. You only get new additional warming if you increase methane over time.”

He added that he is “in no way downplaying the importance of methane” – and that managing it is “very important to make this part of the climate solution”.

He told the event that farmers can turn this climate issue from “being a problem, a challenge, into being a solution”.

Animal agriculture can go “from being a liability to being an asset - if we don’t do what we have done in the past, which is sticking our heads in the sand”, Mr Mitloehner added.