Support anaerobic digestion
2 June 2010

Stop taxpayers' money being used to fund incinerators and demand investment in new biogas plants instead.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a biological process that produces biogas - rich in methane - from food and farm waste.

The biogas can be used as a source of 100% renewable energy by:

Feeding it into the gas grid.
Burning it to generate electricity and supply heat for community heating schemes.
Using it as a transport fuel.

AD has not been used much in the UK so far, but its climate benefits mean there is now a lot of interest in increasing its use. Lots of councils, companies and farmers are hoping to use it in the future.

Up in smoke

But dozens of councils are planning to build large incinerators, which will require huge amounts of waste every year. These will burn food waste that could be anaerobically digested.

This makes no sense in the fight against climate change.

Incinerators contribute to climate change, even if they also generate electricity by:

Generating energy so inefficiently that their carbon dioxide emissions are worse than fossil fuel power stations.
Burning materials that could be recycled, which would save energy.

Alternatives such as recycling and AD are much better for the climate than incineration.

Misspent taxes

The government is offering councils £2 billion of taxpayer funding to subsidise new waste plants.

Much of this money is going to be spent on incineration unless we can change the Government's mind.

Email Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for the Environment

Dear Secretary of State,

I am pleased that the Government is now recognising the benefits of anaerobic digestion (AD), for example through assigning an extra 10 million pounds to support the technology in the last Budget. However, this funding is a drop in the ocean compared with the 2 billion pounds that the Government is giving councils to fund PFI waste projects, many of which are likely to include incineration. I am concerned this will mean that we severely limit our future opportunities to maximise AD of separately collected food waste. These proposed incinerators will take vast quantities of food waste every year for decades, preventing the proper development of AD. Your Department already predicts that there will be too many residual waste plants (like incinerators) built by 2020. But this prediction is likely to be an underestimate as they have assumed that waste will grow in volume - in reality it is going down - and that recycling is only 50%, when it is clear that much higher rates can be achieved. The more excess plants there are, the more they will suck in waste that should be recycled or go to AD. This is because new incinerators will require a fixed amount of waste every day over their 25-30 year lifetime. Please stop risking Defra's vision of making AD an established technology by 2020, and focus on funding this true solution rather than incineration. Please also push for a rapid increase in the separate collection of food waste from households and businesses to provide the feedstock for new AD plants.

You can contact me by email (preferably - to save resources) or at the following address:

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Support anaerobic digestion2 June 2010

Up in smoke

Misspent taxes

Email Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for the Environment

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Support anaerobic digestion
2 June 2010