UK Farms Pushed Into Anaerobic Digestion

Specifically, he is asking Defra to look at the possibility of providing assistance to farmers to meet the capital cost of connecting on-farm plants to the National Grid.

The Minister is an enthusiast of the technology, which can convert slurry into electricity and fertiliser, and recently visited a Government-funded demonstration plant at Ludlow, Shropshire, that uses waste food and green material.

But while the Government has made some moves to encourage uptake, Lord Rooker believes it could still do more.

He expressed frustration at the fact that there were about 3,000 anaerobic digesters on dairy farms in Germany ‘yet nothing in UK apart from Bedfordia and an experimental plant at Ludlow’.

He acknowledged that the German government had provided a ‘long-term commitment’ to the technology through tax breaks and a commitment to purchasing the energy produced.

Asked if the UK Government was prepared to give the same level of ‘support and encouragement’, he said: “We are looking at this. I have pushed in Defra for help in getting electricity produced by anaerobic digestion on to the grid.

In February, Defra Secretary Hilary Benn announced around £10million would be made available to help build several commercial scale anaerobic digestion demonstration plants to showcase the technology.

Lord Rooker said the nine Defra-funded plants would give useful information on issues like capacity, but stressed the key to making the system work was integrating plants with the grid. He said a further barrier was the fact that the Environment Agency has still not produced a standard for the digestate – the by-product of the process – put back on the land.

“There’s a huge amount to be done in terms of what we used to call waste. I think the word ‘waste’ ought to be abandoned as it is a resource.

“All over the world people are waking up to this, but at the moment we are just not using this resource called waste as we could be,” he said.

View the Farmers Guardian story by clicking here.

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