Biogas injection and renewable heat
SOURCE: CIWM, AUGUST 2009
The past month has seen the UK publish its Low Carbon Transition Plan, mapping out the measures required to bring UK greenhouse gas emissions down by 34% by 2020, along with its associated Renewable Energy Strategy, which acknowledged the role that biomass waste can play in renewable energy generation.
The Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Task Force also recently published ‘Developing an Implementation Plan for Anaerobic Digestion’, which highlighted the need to ensure that the various measures encouraging the development and use of AD operate to compliment each other, and to create incentives for the most efficient uses of the products of AD.
The Government has indicated it wants to maximise the cost effective production of biogas, and the injection of ‘upgraded’ biogas (biomethane) into the gas grid, through its AD Demonstration Programme. Biogas is currently used almost exclusively for electricity generation, where it is subsidised under the Renewables Obligation (RO). However, this use is only around 30% efficient, compared with around 90% efficiency when used for domestic heating purposes.
Both the Task Force, and a National Grid report, have called for a commercial incentive to upgrade biogas to biomethane for grid injection, and this looks set to come in the form of the Government’s renewable heat incentive, originally provided for in the Energy Act 2008, and now expected to be in place in 2011. What remains to be seen is whether the level of subsidy provided for renewable heat will be sufficient to divert biogas away from electricity generation and into the grid.
AUTHOR: Vincent Brown
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