55% Growth in Anaerobic Digestion Capacity in the UK in 2013/14 Announced

The official Anaerobic Digestion UK figures are out, and confirms that there was an amazing 55% Growth in Anaerobic Digestion Capacity in the UK over the 12 months 2013/14. This massive over 50% growth, is described simply as being "significant growth", by WRAP (the compiler of these figures - See the EAEM Press Release, which is copied in full below).

In any other sector this rate of growth would be considered to be huge, and the national press would be full of the achievement. So, why is this latest ASORI report announcement being treated in such a luke-warm manner?

We suggest that the reason for this is that the officials are embarrassed to have missed their own target by a large margin, as follows (see the extract from www.ladoma.com below). The achievement of 117 operational biogas sites in the UK at the end of 2014, showed even then, that they were not going to get anywhere near the government's 2011 target of 1,000 operational AD Plants for 2015, and they could not therefore declare it for the success that it undoubtedly has been.

To help convey how far the projections fall short of the target, we have included below part of an article by Energy and Environmental Management (EAEM) Magazine. This explains that the current operational AD Plant number has been growing a lot more rapidly since that time, with the pace of plant commissioning accelerating. Currently, there are 400 Anaerobic Digestion plants now in use according to EAEM Magazine. 

At this rate the magic figure of 1,000 AD Plants in operation in the UK, will finally only be reached some time in 2017.

AD Sees Significant Growth Says Latest Sector Survey

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Content

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has grown significantly in the UK, according to the latest sector survey (ASORI), published today by WRAP.

WRAP’s comprehensive study of the AD sector (which complements the Scottish survey of the organics reprocessing industry – also published today, by Zero Waste Scotland*), for the calendar year 2013, shows that:

• the number of operational sites increased by 34% (up from 87 to 117);
• operating capacity is up by 55% (from 2.07mt to 3.20mt);
• 51% more organic material is being processed (from 1.69mt to 2.55mt); and,
• employment in the sector has increased by 36% (with 482 full-time equivalent jobs compared to 354 in 2012).

In addition, there has been an increase in all the types of feedstocks processed - separated solid food, liquids, manures and crops. However, food and drink waste continues to be the largest proportion of the material processed - with separated solid food accounting for 38% of the feedstocks reported in the survey and liquids 30%.
Food manufacturers and processors provide the biggest proportion of the feedstock, however the volume of material sourced from local authority collections, has increased by more than a third**.
Over a million tonnes of digestate (the product of AD) was applied to agricultural land in 2013 – that’s 98% of total digestate use – demonstrating the benefits of readily available nutrients as well as potentially reducing the reliance on inorganic fertilisers.
Ian Wardle, Head of Organics and Energy at WRAP, said: “It’s fantastic to see such positive results from this survey. The industry is turning a wide variety of wastes into valuable renewable energy and digestate that can be used by farmers as a fertiliser.
“Each year we are seeing the sector grow and this year’s data shows the AD industry is starting to make a marked contribution to the UK economy. Industry has always supported this survey and this year’s excellent response is testament to that.”
The report was commissioned by WRAP, working in partnership with the Renewable Energy Association’s Organics Recycling Group (REAORG), Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association (ADBA), and the Environmental Services Association (ESA). It is widely recognised as the most definitive picture of the organics recycling industry.
The full ASORI report - A survey of the UK Anaerobic Digestion Industry in 2013 - can be found here
Ends

Notes to editors
*The Scottish report - A Survey of the Organics Reprocessing Industry in Scotland 2013 - was managed and delivered by WRAP on behalf of the Scottish Government having been initiated in 2013/14. The survey of Scottish AD sites was part of the UK ASORI project, however the Scottish Government also funded a survey of the composting sector.
**Of the feedstock for which sources were stated, it increased by around 35% from 170,000t to 230,000t.

1. ASORI – Annual survey of the UK organics recycling industry.
2. WRAP’s vision is a world without waste, where resources are used sustainably. Working in partnership to help businesses, individuals and communities improve resource efficiency.
3. Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000
4. More information on all of WRAP's programmes can be found on www.wrap.org.uk

" http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/ad-sees-significant-growth-says-latest-sector-survey

Recent UK Anaerobic Digestion Developments and Future Projections

www.rinobs.com

"The growth of anaerobic digestion in the UK has not met Defra’s strategy target of 2011, when 1,000 new digesters were to be built by 2015. In fact less than half that figure was achieved, nevertheless the industry has been growing rapidly in real terms in the UK. Considering, the difficult economic circumstances, and reticence […] The post Recent UK Anaerobic Digestion Developments and Future Projections appeared first on Rinobs Renewables. " http://www.rinobs.com/recent-uk-anaerobic-digestion-developments-and-future-projections.html

Anaerobic digestion steps on the gas - Energy and Environmental Management (EAEM) Magazine

news.google.com

"Energy and Environmental Management (EAEM) Magazine. Commissioning of the UK's 400th anaerobic digestion (AD) plant by food waste management company Biogen in South Wales marks a milestone for the industry, in a year which has seen 102 new plants open. The announcement was made at the UK AD ...AD feedstock guidelines get industry backingMaterials Recycling World500% jump in volume of recycled UK food wasteEat Out Magazineall 3 news articles »" http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=uk&usg=AFQjCNEZeKkqYMOAeBjsvPOHdXQCbg3Row&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52778893906734&ei=FMqZVaDLG4y5aInGk5gE&url=http://www.eaem.co.uk/news/anaerobic-digestion-steps-gas

Conclusion

A massive 50% rise in Anaerobic digestion plant numbers (and UK capacity in use) to 117, was recorded in 2013 (the latest year for which data is available).

But, the achievement has been played down by the UK government. We think that the reason for that is, that a target of 1,000 biogas plants was set for 2015, but even now (mid-2015), only 400 have been commissioned, with the knock-on effect that by the end of 2015 there will still be less than half of those 1,000 plants, operating in the country.


The UK/ European biogas industry has been, and still is, growing rapidly and the momentum is growing. We would like to point out that this growth is being achieved, by project promoters, despite uncertainties caused by changes which have been made to the subsidies on offer by the UK government.

More reading: BioCycle Magazine has an article about AD Capacity Expansion here.

A Round-Up of the New Anaerobic Digestion Plants in the News - Spring to Summer 2010 UK/Europe

Converting organic waste materials into renewable energy is an essential component of the EU countries both to meet national commitments to renewables EU targets, and indirectly to achieve zero food and packaging to landfill. So, how is the construction and commissioning of new AD plants proceeding, which will contribute to this?

Here is a summary of a few projects recently reported.

Cambi has announced that it will be supplying the technology for a new sludge treatment anaerobic-digestion plant in Drammen, Norway using their thermal hydrolysis process to optimize conversion. This will use feed stock sludge and waste and the contract is worth about 12M USD.

Vertal appears to be using Anaerobic Digestion as a component of its process mix, which includes composting and pasteurisation of food waste. This award winning company accomplishes this, we are informed, entirely through self heating, harnessing the energy released during digestion to carry out the pasteurisation.

A WRAP (Waste Resources Action Programme), part UK Government Funded, 3M GBP anaerobic digestion plant has opened on a Staffordshire (UK) Farm. This plant will supply 1.3MW of renewable energy to the national grid, with most of the energy being derived from source segregated food waste. It will process 15,000 tonnes of waste annually. Full operational output is planned for Autumn 2010.

Xergi's AD plant in Ayrshire, Scotland is moving ahead, and is expected to be operating by early 2011.  The purchaser's Chief Executive has plans to extend the pant to include connection to the gas distribution network. The Ayrshire plant will become Xergi's second UK plant, with their first UK plant located near Boston, Lincolnshire, UK.

AD plants succeed or fail on the ability to mix feedstock and then again within the reactor. System Mix is reported to be providing mixing expertise to Welsh Water, and other clients for their digesters. One of the mixing systems in use will be a drop-in lance type system.

Jenbach (Austria) also announced in July that the troducer of Baby Nutrition Products would soon be saving CO2 based on the special “Green Tariff” available to anaerobic digestion plant generated electricity available at the plant's location.

In this project cow manure is being converted to energy at the first biogas co-generation plant in the Ukraine. The facility, which is powered by 4,000 cows and a GE (NYSE: GE) Jenbacher gas engine, has recently completed nine months of successful operation at the Ukrainian Milk Company Ltd., located near Kiev.

The excess power produced at the plant is being sold to the grid. The Ukrainian Milk Company, which produces milk for baby nutrition products, received the license for selling power to the grid based on the “green” tariff, which is being approved by Ukraine authorities. According to the law, the “green” tariff is “a special tariff for electricity generated at the power plants with use of alternative energy sources.”

The new combined heat and power (CHP) plant is powered by a GE JMC 312 containerized co-generation model gas engine and is able to substitute the equivalent of 1.2 million cubic meters of natural gas annually and, therefore, is projected to reduce the equivalent of 18,000 metric tons of CO2. Once converted into biogas, the manure from the cows produces 625 kW of electricity and 686 kW of thermal output.

This is GE’s first order from the biogas plant construction company ZORG. The unit was sold to ZORG through GE’s distributor and service provider in the Ukraine, SINAPSE. We hope that you found this round-up of the new Anaerobic Digestion Plants in the News from spring to summer 2010 interesting.

More about the Ukraine Plant at Ukraine Milk Company Powered by 4,000 Cows and GE Biogas Engine.

Much Needed Quality Protocol for Anaerobic Digestate Published

Anaerobic digestion technology is expected to become more attractive to UK investors following the publication of a long-awaited Quality Protocol aimed at cutting red tape governing solid residues from the process, known as digestate.

The revised Quality Protocol is available now on the Environment Agency website

WRAP, Defra and the Environment Agency have published a document which, subject to approval from the European Commission, will enable digestate which meets set criteria to be classified as a product rather than a waste. Such a move would mean the material would no longer be subject to waste management controls.

Anaerobic digestion is the process through which biodegradable waste is broken down by micro-organisms in the absence of oxygen. This process produces biogas, which can be used to generate energy, waste water and digestate.

The protocol is particularly significant because, despite government support for anaerobic digestion technology and its carbon benefits, there has been limited uptake of the technology in the UK to date - with marketing digestate one of the main sticking points.

Nick Bethel, policy advisor at the Environment Agency, told letsrecycle.com that the protocol had been designed to "bring value into the resource" and one of its purposes was to create a "climate for investment". Mr Bethel added the EA was "expecting to see further investment and more AD facilities being built" thanks to the re-classification of digestate from a waste to a product.

Requirements

The Quality Protocol, which has been revised since an original consultation in April (see letsrecycle.com story) lays out a number of requirements for AD operators who want to produce "quality digestate" from biodegradable waste.

Digestate must be produced using source-segregated materials listed in the Protocol, such as municipal food waste which has been collected separately and specified food and animal wastes.

Significantly, the Protocol designates end market for the digestate. Those markets are:

• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Soil and field grown horticulture
• Land restoration
• Soil manufacture and blending operations
• Land reclamation

In all cases the digestate must be used in a way that does not "pose a risk to the environment" and does "not compromise the future sustainable use of the soil to which they are applied".

Waste operators must also keep strict records showing showing that digestate meets the approved standards and the Quality Protocol. AD operators must also obtain certification from an approved body such as the Association for Organics Recycling.

Before publication as a final document in England and Wales, the draft Quality Protocol must be notified before the European Commission's Technical Standards committee, which may take up to six months.

During this period, the Environment Agency will continue to regulate the production and use of quality outputs from anaerobic digestion of source-segregated biodegradable waste in accordance with the interim regulatory position statement available on the Environment Agency website.

A spokesman for Defra commented: "The Government recognises the potential of food waste to generate energy in an environmentally friendly way. For example, we are investing £10 million over the next three years into new anaerobic digestion demonstration plants to encourage a number of industries including energy providers to take up this important new technology.

Anaerobic Digestion Quality Protocol nears Completion

AnDigestion Ltd, which currently requires 60-70 separate consents for digestate from its AD plant in Devon, has welcomed the Protocol.

A major regulatory barrier to the development of anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in the UK is close to being overcome, with work to develop a "quality protocol" for the process now nearing completion, writes James Cartledge.

The Protocol will allow companies generating energy through the AD process to deal with the residues from the process more easily - opening the door to potentially hundreds or even thousands of new schemes in the UK.

Anaerobic digestion generates energy from organic waste materials including household or commercial food waste, as well as agricultural wastes and slurry. The technology involves huge tanks in which the organic material is broken down by bacteria, which generate energy-rich "biogas", which is mainly methane.

But while the solid residues from the process is a useful nitrogen-rich fertiliser, farmers seeking to use it on their fields are currently hindered by its legal classification as a "waste".

The new Quality Protocol will mean that if the digestate material is produced to a certain standard - known as PAS 110 and also nearing completion - the fertiliser will not be classed as a waste in the eyes of the law.

Yesterday saw the developers of the Protocol, the government's Waste and Resources Action Programme, granting the UCAS-accredited scheme independence by formally handing over its operation to the Renewable Energy Association.

At the REA's Bioenergy 2008 event in Birmingham, the Association announced formation of a new oversight panel for the AD Quality Protocol, chaired by Defra policy advisor Roger Unwin. The REA is now inviting representatives of different industry sectors interested in anaerobic digestion to come forward to become members of the Protocol oversight panel.

Mr Unwin said yesterday: "I have been asked to announce that there will be an REA biogas certification scheme, it will be working with this Quality Protocol to a PAS 110 standard, which should shortly be available."

The final form of the Protocol is awaiting only the sign-off from the Environment Agency, which polices waste regulations including governing the spreading of organic waste-derived fertilisers on land. More...

Anerobic Digestion Also to be Helped by Redefinition of Waste

Classifying a host of waste products as raw materials could break down the administrative barriers that currently make them difficult to reuse.

Cutting red tape will make it easier to turn millions of tonnes of industrial and commercial waste into usable materials, according to the Environment Agency and Government-funded recycling champion WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Programme). The initiative, the Waste Protocols Project, follows in the footsteps of a successful trial in this area which redefined composted waste that met certain standards as a Non-waste product.

The second round of the project will focus on five major waste streams:

1. Steel slag from steel manufacture, which can be reused in construction and building materials and as an agricultural fertiliser.
2. Gypsum from waste plasterboard which can be used to make new plasterboard and in cement products.
3. Incinerator bottom ash which is made up from glass, porcelain, brick, gravel, sand, slag and ash from household waste that is burnt in incinerators, and can be used as aggregate in construction materials.
4. Paper mill ash which is produced when sludge from paper making is burnt for energy recovery and the ash can be used as an aggregate.
5. Uncontaminated top soil from greenfields and development sites can be reused on a wide range of horticultural and leisure sites such as parks, golf courses and football pitches.

In addition the protocol will also look at the status of the by-products of anaerobic digestion, the technique of disposing of food waste favoured in the recently published Waste Strategy.

The project will set standards that the by-products must meet and, should they do so, will do away with the need for costly licensing to dispose of or transport waste.

Anaerobic Digestion "Big Opportunity" for Municipal Waste

Urban-based local authorities should consider anaerobic digestion (AD) as an alternative to in-vessel composting for the recycling of municipal biodegradable food waste, according to researchers at WRAP.

Speaking today (23 April 2007) at the annual Recycling and Waste Forum in Birmingham on Thursday, WRAP's organics supply programme manager Louise Hollingworth said: "In-vessel composting is obviously very established in the UK but there are only a couple of AD plants in the UK taking biodegradable municipal waste.

Anaerobic digestion plants, like this one run by Greenfinch Ltd in Shropshire, could be the future for municipal waste in the UK according to WRAP:

There is a big opportunity for the UK to learn from Europe and optimize collection schemes and perhaps for urban authorities as AD solutions are something that could be used,

she said.

Ms Hollingworth was discussing a report commissioned by WRAP and published this March, entitled "Dealing with food waste in the UK".

The year-long study by Dominic Hogg of the consultancy Eunomia focused on the European picture for Anaerobic Digestion - a biological treatment conducted in the absence of air, which produces both a compost product and bio-gas that can generate renewable energy.

The study discussed the 124 operational AD plants throughout Europe and the "clear benefits" of the technology.

Ms Hollingworth also said that in the UK many local authorities are "concerned about the robustness of AD" and consider it an "unproven technology" however she said: "The European experience flies in the face of this."

Anaerbic digestion "has a stronger, overall environmental performance" than other technologies, she added.

AD could be seen to be an appropriate technology for urban local authorities as households in urban areas tend to collect a lower proportion of green waste.

Costs
WRAP's research also compared the cost of technologies processing biodegradable municipal waste and although AD technology came out as the most expensive, at £45-55 per tonne, in comparison to in-vessel composting at £35-45 per tonne, Ms. Hollingworth said that the possibility of selling the energy extracted from the process had not been included in the predicted costs. More at LetsRecycle here...