Grass-to-gas plant could be UK's answer to fracking, says Ecotricity
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Version 0 of 1. A plant that turns grass into gas could be Britain’s answer to fracking, according to its operators. The anaerobic digestion system will be one of the first such plants to feed gas directly into the British grid and the first to be fed solely on grass. The development in Gloucestershire by Ecotricity, a green energy company, would heat 6,000 homes. It will enter the planning stages within months and could be operating before 2017, should it receive approval. Britain’s home heating grid is increasingly reliant on imported gas, mainly from Norway and the Middle East. Gas production in the UK has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2000. Advocates for the fracking industry, including the three major political parties, argue that shale gas will be necessary to maintain Britain’s energy independence. But opponents and the renewable energy industry point to fracking’s slow roll-out and carbon footprint as reasons to bypass the technology. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, said the company’s system of turning grass into methane could be a game-changing addition to the UK’s energy mix. “It’s a great concept. And it could be the answer, you know, to how we power the country and fight climate change at the same time,” said Vince. “It’s certainly the answer to fracking because I think we could deploy it more quickly, actually, than fracking can get up and running. With none of the risks. And it’s not going to run out, which fracking will eventually, even if we can afford to burn it from a carbon point of view.” The plant would harvest grass from farmland within a 15km radius, requiring around 1,600 hectares of land to keep it supplied. Ecotricity said the area of land used for cattle grazing in the UK had almost halved since 1990. Around half the grass would come from pastureland that is little used or no longer used for grazing. The rest would be taken from feedstock. In anaerobic digestion the fuel, in this case grass, is consumed by bacteria in a sealed tank. The byproducts of the process are methane, CO2 and fertiliser – all of which are used in industrial processes. It is common to use food or farm waste to power these plants. There are more than 100 anaerobic digestion plants in the UK, mostly running off food and farm waste, but they do not create enough gas to enter the grid. Instead they burn the gas for electricity, which is less efficient. Vince said the reactivation of unproductive land would be managed in such a way that habitat was created for birds and other wildlife. It would also provide farmers with a crop rotation option, which could boost their food production. “It’s the antithesis of fracking, because it’s good for nature, it’s good for farmers, it’s good for food production and the gas, of course, is carbon neutral,” said Vince. The fracking industry rejected the idea that it was an either/or situation. Ken Cronin, CEO of UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said: “We believe in an energy mix – including renewables, nuclear and biomethane from anaerobic digestion. With 84% of homes using natural gas for heating or cooking, gas being a critical feedstock for our chemical industry and the UK a big net importer of gas, we need to explore all indigenous sources of natural gas and not rule anything out.” It is not the first time Ecotricity has heralded a new dawn for the UK’s gas supply. In 2009 Vince told the Observer that a food waste-to-gas scheme would be “kickstarting the market to move Britain from brown to green gas”. On Monday, Vince said the vision had needed to evolve through a few technological incarnations to settle on a workable model. Jonathan Scurlock, the National Farmer’s Union chief renewable energy adviser, said that Ecotricity’s proposal, while interesting, required harvesting of a large amount of grass from unproductive land and it would be a challenge to make it economical. “We’re a little bit sceptical about some of the claims that have been made in the past about Ecotricity’s business plans. If they can get a project up and running and show that it works then, yes, we’ll be convinced. “There’s plenty of room for diversity. There’s a wide number of different approaches to anaerobic digestion out there. There are lots of feed stocks that can be used. And we certainly welcome diversity in the biogas supply chain.” |