PRESS RELEASE: Anaerobic digestion can underpin Clean Growth Strategy – ADBA

The Anaerobic Digestion & Bioresources Association (ADBA) has today welcomed the Clean Growth Strategy published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and said that anaerobic digestion (AD) can play an underpinning role in meeting the strategy’s goals.

ADBA Chief Executive Charlotte Morton said:

The multi-faceted nature of AD means that, with the right support, it can play a central role in decarbonising heat, electricity, transport, and farming, as well as increasing energy and food security and restoring the UK’s degraded soils. No other technology can make such a key contribution to so many different areas of the Clean Growth Strategy.

 

We welcome the government’s ambition to divert all food waste from landfill by 2030 and to support local authorities in rolling out separate food waste collections. We look forward to BEIS’s new Resources & Waste Strategy, which will need to be supported by meaningful funding and legislation to effect the scale of change needed for an urgent transition to a more circular economy.

 

We also welcome the strategy’s highlighting of the importance of best practice in AD. ADBA’s pioneering, industry-led Best Practice Scheme, which will be launched in full later this year, will help support AD operators in meeting the highest environmental, health and safety, and operational standards.

 

The publication of the Clean Growth Strategy today is a welcome sign that the government is starting to think about how we can make the deep emissions cuts that will be necessary to meet the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets over the next 15 years. What is needed now is tangible support for AD in the form of the following:

 

• Urgent tabling of legislation on the Renewable Heat Incentive to renew support for biomethane-to-grid;
• A long-term replacement for the Feed-In Tariff to support small-scale renewable electricity generation;
• Mandatory separate food waste collections in England to allow AD to recycle this vital and underused resource; and
• A new support system for farmers that rewards carbon abatement and incentivises the use of biofertiliser to restore soils.

For further information contact Chris Noyce, PR & Parliamentary Affairs Executive: 020 3176 5441 / chris.noyce@adbioresources.org