Benn announces new funding to kick start renewable energy development

DEFRA Secretary Hilary Benn has announced investment to encourage production of renewable energy in the UK.

Around £10 million will be made available under the Environmental Transformation Fund (EFT) to help build several commercial scale anaerobic digestion demonstration plants to showcase the technology.

Anaerobic digestion is a process that converts organic matter, for example slurry and silage or food waste, into biogas, a form of renewable energy.

The process achieves various environmental goals simultaneously ? the production of renewable energy, reducing methane emissions on farms and diverting food waste from landfill. Yet despite its obvious benefits, uptake in the UK is low, compared with countries like Germany, where, due partly to sympathetic Government policy, thousands of farms run anaerobic digestion plants.

Speaking at the NFU conference on Monday, Mr Benn said: ?Those who are working on this already have told us we need to show more people this technology operating if we are to get more investment. Demonstration plants are a great way to do this.?

He said a number of the demonstration plants would ?directly or indirectly use agricultural feedstocks?. ?I am really keen to try and make sure that these and food waste can be treated together wherever possible by getting farmers and local councils to work together,? he said.

Resources will also be made available under the EFT to help speed up the development of the so-called ?second generation? biofuel technologies. Potentially over £5m will be made available to the Carbon Trust towards major research it is undertaking aimed at speeding up the development of new, more efficient biofuels.

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By: www.farmersguardian.com

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