Debate contribution: Energy, Food and Environmental Security: Biomethane

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 20 April 2026.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

20 April 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Energy, Food and Environmental Security: Biomethane

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5494201

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Last week, the Assembly failed to support a motion to cost the net zero madness that each Department is chasing. One week later, we have the Ulster Unionist Party, which wants to simply tinker with the climate change targets, now pushing the debate to create the most expensive form of green energy. I cannot help but cast my mind back to the NAP consultation event that was held in Greenmount in May 2025. The clear impression that I had on leaving that meeting was that the solution that was being peddled by the Department was the creation of new large-scale anaerobic digestion plants, with farmers expected to pay to have their solids separated and transported to those plants. We have not yet received the outcome of the NAP consultation, yet here we are debating a motion that appears to be pushing support for building new "super" AD plants. Everyone needs to take a step back, remove their environmental tinted glasses and look at it from a farmer's perspective. A well-established and highly organised lobby is seeking to establish AD plants right across Northern Ireland. I support cost-effective green energy. However, if that is truly the answer to our agrienvironmental challenges, we must ask ourselves a very simple question: why does it require such a heavy subsidy to be currently viable? Currently, those plants rely heavily on renewables obligation certificates (ROCs), which are due to end in the next five years. When ROCs disappear, what then? Will we simply rename the subsidy and carry on, perhaps under the banner of "sustainable utilisation of livestock slurry" — otherwise known as "SULS"? I hope not. Any credible green scheme must stand on its own feet; otherwise, the taxpayer foots the bill to build it and then to run it. To operate at scale, AD plants require energy-dense feedstock. Slurry alone does not provide that. That means growing grass and crops to feed it alongside 15% to 20% of slurry solids.

Every acre taken out of food production and diverted to feeding an AD plant is an acre lost to producing food for our nation. Farmers who live close to existing digesters find themselves competing for land with AD operators who can afford to outbid them, not because of their efficiency or productivity but because, in some cases, up to 75% of their income comes from subsidies. That is not a level playing field. It risks fundamentally changing land use in Northern Ireland, moving away from feeding livestock and people to feeding digesters. At a time when food security is rightly being recognised as a serious issue, pushing the most expensive form of renewable energy as a solution makes me deeply uncomfortable. It speaks more to pursuing the net zero ideology than producing cost-effective, sustainable energy. That is what happens when ideology replaces evidence. The direction of travel appears to be that farmers will be forced to separate their slurry and pay to transport those solids to the nearest AD plant. Those solids then become free feedstock for the digester. The AD operator then profits again by selling the gas that is produced. Farmers take the cost of separating, and a foreign investor takes the reward, unless those plants are to be farmer-owned and farmer-led. Earlier today, I raised with the Agriculture Minister the issue of his draft climate action plan 2030 targets, which include a reduction of 18% in dairy cattle, 17% in beef cattle and 18% across sheep, pigs and poultry. If we continue down that pathway, believing that more ADs are the answer, it will reduce stock levels and our capacity to produce food, not least because grass — .

I am happy to give way, as long as you are quick and let me back in before my five minutes are up.

I am certainly not making stuff up for a TikTok, Mr Butler. In your opening remarks on AD, you said:

"Used badly, it can cause harm."

That, indeed, is what the farming community is fearful of. We can bring in food scraps; that is OK. However, if you are to create more anaerobic digesters, where will the feedstock come from that goes with the slurry?

Yes.

I did.

Absolutely, and how do you plan to do that without creating more AD plants? That is what you are doing here. You are creating more AD plants —.

No, because they already have feedstock.

I fear that, if we continue down that road, in a number of years, it will be RHI mark 2, and it will be traced back to the Ulster Unionists as the ones who first pushed it in the Chamber.

774 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:27 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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