Land demand

While most agricultural land will continue to be used for food production, Barry says, there will be an increasing proportion devoted to the production of renewable energy, predominantly across wind, solar and anaerobic-digester-sourced gas. The rationale for farmer involvement, he explains, is mainly economic. Renewable energy production can offer farmers opportunities to diversify their income streams and, in many cases, increase farm profitability over existing enterprises.

Choices for landowners

Barry provides a timely warning of the need for ‘informed decision-making, strategic engagement and a collaborative approach between landowners and renewable energy companies’. He outlined the choice of approaches available. For example, hosting solar panel installations on land or roofs, or providing sites for wind turbine installation. Provided the government delivers a viable support mechanism, there will also be opportunities for farmers to supply feed stocks, mainly slurry/manures and grass silage for the proposed network of anaerobic digesters to be built around the country over the next decade. All this involvement is contingent on landowners securing a return that is at least as good, if not far better, than the return from existing land-use activities on their farms.

Targets

The premise of all this renewable energy production is the Climate Action Plan 2024, which sets out ambitious targets to reduce emissions across the economy and to produce 80 per cent of our electricity requirements from renewable energy sources by 2030. Barry outlines the enormous challenge and opportunity ahead: “The renewable energy targets require that there will be an additional nine gigawatts of onshore wind energy capacity and eight gigawatts (GW) of solar PV, while the draft biomethane strategy has a target of 5.7 terawatt hours of gas from anaerobic digestion by 2030.” He lists the direct and indirect implications for agricultural land use: “Agricultural land will be needed for the growth of feed stocks used in anaerobic digestion that produces methane, for onshore wind generation and for solar PV energy generation.” In addition, he writes, farmers can earn money from selling electricity to the grid (or by reducing electricity purchases from the grid) through the installation of microgeneration or small-scale renewable electricity generation.

Challenging ambition

Without doubt, the most ambitious target set out in the Climate Action Plan document is the full-scale development of up to 200 anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Ireland by 2030. The technology is straightforward. It is widely used in Europe, the UK and Northern Ireland. That is not the challenge. But to build a plant requires planning, financing, construction and completion. All of that takes time and 2030 is less than six years away. Even if there are no planning objections with consequent delays, the timescale is tight. Barry describes the potential role of landowners in the project: “To meet the biomethane target, an estimated total land area of 120,000 hectares, close to three per cent of available agricultural land, will be required to cultivate the necessary silage for anaerobic plants. Additionally, winter slurry from around 1.3 million cattle will be needed, representing 20 per cent of all winter cattle slurry production in Ireland. These projections assume an equal mix of grass silage and slurry on a fresh weight basis.”
Outlining the wider implications of these biodigester demands on agricultural land, he writes: “If the targets for biomethane production are to be met, there will be consequences for existing land-uses, with land that is currently used to raise cattle and other livestock, being used to exclusively grow grass for biomethane production. This diversification will likely lead to some displacement of livestock.”

Land-use redirection

The Teagasc energy specialist also analysed the other renewable energy production impacts on land-use change: “Further land-based wind turbine installation to reach the set target capacity of 8GW by 2030, depending on a range of factors, including individual turbine output capacity, would require up to another 2,667 turbines being installed across the country. With each turbine requiring two acres, to account for site, access routes and setback allocations this implies a total land area of 5,334 acres, with most of the surrounding land being available for cattle or sheep grazing.”
He also elaborated on the impetus for solar developments: “The Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) has been instrumental in driving the adoption of solar PV and wind projects in Ireland. In the initial three auctions, a total of 2.7GW of contracts were awarded, accounting for over one-third of the 2030 target. Notably, the fourth RESS auction is scheduled for the second quarter of 2024, indicating continued momentum in renewable energy development. The consultation for the fourth onshore RESS auction is now open.

“Currently, there are 18 solar projects connected to the Irish grid, signalling the progress made in renewable energy integration. The microgeneration support framework has also played a pivotal role in accelerating solar deployment, with seven hundred systems registering per week at certain points during 2023. By the end of last year, Ireland had connected 300MW from microgeneration alone,” he writes.
“When combined with additional ground-mounted solar farms, the total connected capacity reached 1GW by the end of 2023. The third RESS auction, held on September 15, 2023, saw significant participation from the solar sector. Twenty solar farms, covering approximately 2,500 acres, along with three wind farms, successfully secured funding in RESS 3. It is noteworthy that the average support price was €100.47 per megawatt hour (MWh) for RESS 2. However, despite the success, this auction delivered the smallest volume of renewable energy among all auctions to date, and at the highest price, indicating some challenges in the market landscape”
He went on to say that the the 2030 solar PV target is 8GW, which is equivalent to roughly 16,000 hectares of solar farms, if all the 8GW were achieved exclusively via larger-scale solar PV arrays. Realistically, some of the targets are likely to be delivered by microgeneration and smaller-scale generation installations.

Summary

In summarising the implications of increased renewable energy production on the Irish landscape, Barry writes: “Diversifying Irish agricultural land use and decarbonising the Irish electricity system are both critical components of the national Climate Action Plan. The use of agricultural land to grow grass as a feedstock in the generation of biomethane will be central to the achievement of the national targets for biomethane production and will, if achieved, see up to 120,000 hectares of land required.
“Further onshore wind energy production will require 2,000 hectares. Up to 16,000 hectares could be required to achieve the 8GW solar PV energy generation target by 2030. All these new renewable energy uses of land open up novel opportunities for Irish farmers and landowners. In many instances, the income-earning potential of land leased to a solar or wind energy generation company will exceed the income likely to be earned per hectare from conventional agricultural production systems.”