Industry leaders have sent a letter signed by more than 170 businesses and organisations, warning that a stalled government support scheme is putting British jobs, investment and energy security at risk.
Leading businesses and organisations from across the UK’s biogas and biomethane industry sent the open letter to Downing Street on 7 September, calling on the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and the Chancellor, John Healey, to back British-made green gas.
The letter, signed by more than 170 businesses, farmers and organisations under the banner ‘Back British Biogas’, warns that the scheme supporting new biomethane production, the Green Gas Support Scheme, has run out of money, leaving investment-ready projects stalled just as the government looks for ways to cut household bills and reduce reliance on imported gas.
Signatories include PepsiCo, all of the UKs Gas Distribution Networks, energy giant Engie and UK wide trade bodies including, Future Energy Networks, and Energy Utilities Alliance and the campaign group the Green Gas Taskforce
Biomethane is made through anaerobic digestion, a proven process that has been used safely in Britain for decades. Food waste, farm slurry and sewage are fed into sealed tanks, where naturally occurring microbes break them down, similar to a cow’s stomach, to produce a gas that is chemically identical to the natural gas already piped into millions of British homes.
The process also enables the return of bio-fertiliser to the land, reducing farmers’ reliance on imported chemical fertiliser, and can capture a stream of carbon dioxide that can be sold or stored permanently underground.
Britain’s more than 740 anaerobic digestion plants already turn food waste, farm slurry and sewage into green gas, processing 36 million tonnes of waste a year that would otherwise go to landfill or be burned. Industry analysis suggests the sector could support 56,700 jobs and add £5.6 billion a year to the UK economy by 2050, with more than four in five of those jobs outside London and the Southeast.
The letter also points out that green gas keeps more of the money spent on it in Britain than any comparable low-carbon technology, with at least 80p of every pound of public support staying in the UK supply chain, and that a fully backed sector could save £415 a year per household from to the net zero transition.
The letter also calls on the government to adjust the treatment of biomethane under the UK ETS to accurately reflect its contribution to net zero. Currently, when delivered through the public gas grid, it is treated identically to fossil gas, despite having a dramatically lower lifecycle carbon impact, and in many cases resulting in negative CO2 emissions.
Chris Huhne, Chair of the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association (ADBA) and former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said:
“Britain already has the technology, the feedstock and the industry to cut our reliance on imported gas, and we are simply not using it.
“Every delay to fix the scheme that funds new biomethane plants is a trigger for investment to go elsewhere. Other European countries with the same gas problem – France, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Italy – and happily taking the investment we spurn.
“This isn’t a subsidy for the future; it’s a switch the government can flick now with quicker results than drilling any North Sea gas field.”
Read the open letter to the Prime Minister
