Defra Minister Lord Henley has given the official green light to a £10 million loan fund to boost anaerobic digestion (AD) projects.
Administered by the government’s Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP), the fund will target businesses looking to invest in anaerobic digestion and will award loans of up to £1 million over the next four years.
Figures suggest that around 7.5% of the power the country will need by 2020 could be produced from the 100 million tonnes of food waste the UK produces annually.
Announcing the fund Lord Henley said: “The Loan Fund builds on the Anaerobic Digestion Strategy and Action Plan to develop a strong and vibrant AD industry. It will help to reduce the amount of food sent to landfill and give more businesses the opportunity to use AD to produce their own power and electricity.”
Anaerobic digestion is a technology that produces bio-gas from organic material such as food waste and manure, this can be used for combined heat and/or power or be fed into the natural gas grid as biomethane; the residual waste can be used as a bio fertiliser. AD is popular with those who have easy access to organic waste such as farmers and the food processing industry as well as local authorities seeking to avoid landfill.
- Funding may help dairy farmers looking to invest in anaerobic digestion
Government funding under schemes such as the Feed in Tariff and the Renewable Heat Incentive have increased interest for AD schemes but until now there has been a shortage of capital funding.
Marcus Gover, Director of the Closed Loop Economy at WRAP, said: “Across the UK, there are now AD facilities capable of managing 656,500 tonnes of organic waste each year, diverting waste from landfill, generating renewable energy and creating green jobs. The 300,000 tonnes of extra capacity we expect this fund will create will bring the UK’s AD processing capacity close to 1 million tonnes per year.
“AD is a reliable, safe and profitable resource efficiency process supported by Government, industry, local authorities and communities.”
WRAP will open the fund for the first round of applications until October 31st 2011, these will be awarded according to a competitive process.