View from the top WE MUST SEPARATE FOOD WASTE TO REDUCE
IT AND REALISE AD’S FULL POTENTIAL By Charlotte Morton, ADBA’s Chief Executive
use of £55m than investing in rolling out separate food waste collections across England. More than six months on, I’m frustrated at the government’s inability to cotton on to this no-brainer – but increasingly hopeful that it is only a matter of time before it does.
L Carbon Budget reduction target. Need I go on?
The business case for separating food waste, both to reduce it and recycle what’s left through AD, is a rock solid one that also offers a whole range of opportunities. Recycled through AD, inedible food waste could produce 9 TWh of methane, enough to heat 720,000 households. AD delivers nutrient-rich digestate biofertiliser, which can help to restore our depleted soils and save farmers money on the cost of energy-intensive commercial fertilisers. AD plants and their supply chain could generate 30,000 jobs by 2030 if the industry continues to grow. Diverting the biodegradable municipal waste currently sent to landfill in the UK to AD each year to 2032 would achieve more than the emissions reduction of around 9 MtCO2
e per year required to meet the Fifth
One of the key points I highlighted to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee when giving evidence to their inquiry on food waste in early February was that the right outcomes from recycling food waste can only be delivered by looking at the big picture. Cost benefit analyses need to recognise that while waste management authorities might bear any upfront costs of separate food waste collections (where not offset, for example by more infrequent residual waste collections), some of the benefits that result from AD, such as greenhouse gas abatement and renewable energy production, accrue to the UK as a whole.
While we wait for stronger action from government on making inedible food waste more readily available for AD, there are a host of other opportunities stemming from Theresa May’s policy agenda. BEIS’ Green Paper on building an Industrial Strategy is welcome, particularly given its focus on science, research and innovation, which are all critical to ensuring the UK is in the best position to be a world leader in the £1 trillion global biogas industry. We have been working with a range of universities and others in putting together the case for a Centre for Anaerobic Biotechnology and Bioresources Research, which for a government investment of £50m would provide the required step change in research and innovation to help AD become cheaper than coal and provide more energy than nuclear.
BEIS’ call for evidence on the UK bioeconomy has also given us the perfect opportunity to shout about the multiple benefits of AD for the UK economy. Our
4 AD & BIORESOURCES NEWS | SPRING 2017
ast year I attended a workshop in which Ian Boyd, the Chief Scientific Advisor at Defra, said that he couldn’t think of a better
response identifies the important contribution further growth in AD would make to decarbonisation, sustainability and food security in particular.
Given the uncertainty surrounding the UK’s future relationship with the European Union and the high level of political instability in many other Western democracies, it’s more important than ever that we as an industry work together to keep pushing government to support the green economy and ensure that we take full advantage of the opportunities presented to us, so we can realise the huge national and global potential of AD.
www.adbioresources.org adbioresources.org
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