Sludge Watch ==> Sludge Biomass offers heat as UK's subsea gas dwindles ... emits less CO2

[Maureen Reilly]

Biomass offers heat as UK's subsea gas dwindles
Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:29 AM BST
By Daniel Fineren
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's shrinking North Sea gas reserves are pushing up 
energy bills, yet the opportunity for heating homes cleanly and cheaply by 
burning organic matter such as grass and sewage sludge is being missed.
The emerging industry promoting such biomass says it urgently needs more 
government support to realise its potential of heating the nation while 
slashing carbon emissions and dependency on oil and gas imports.
Burning biomass not only produces much less carbon dioxide than fossil 
fuels. Crops and trees used for the purpose also absorb the gas, thought to 
cause climate change, when they grow.
About 40 percent of UK energy demand is for heating and most of that comes 
from gas. Until recently the country enjoyed plentiful supplies from the 
North Sea but Britain must now import ever more gas and household bills have 
ballooned.
The high cost of energy is an increasing social concern.
"We need to address the fact that this rise in oil and gas prices has led to 
an increase in electricity prices, which means that around about another 
million people in England have fallen into fuel poverty," UK climate change 
minister Ian Pearson told the Bioenergy 2006 conference in Weston-super-Mare 
this month.
Pearson said biomass heat is a crucial weapon for combating fuel poverty and 
climate change.
"We believe that biomass has an important role to play to meet these 
challenges," he said.
ALTERNATIVE TO GAS?
Billions have been spent on new gas import facilities, like the Langeled 
pipeline to bring Norwegian gas to the UK.
But advocates of biomass say that by replacing imported natural gas with 
other sources of winter warmth, Britain could be self sufficient in heating 
and boost its agriculture.
Wood chips and "energy crops" like oil seed rape and miscanthus or "Elephant 
Grass" could, with the right planning, turn UK farmers into this century's 
new energy barons, they say.
"We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas," Heinz Kopetz, who 
spearheaded Austria's push to replace imported fosil fuels 25 years ago, 
told the conference.
In 2005, amid rapidly rising oil and gas prices, Austria's biomass capacity 
jumped almost 25 percent, Kopetz said.
At around 35 euros per megawatt hour of heat produced, biomass heating now 
costs about half as much as fossil fuel-fired heating in Austria.
High oil and gas prices have already led to a temporary boom in Britain in 
the installation of small biomass boilers that are typically fuelled by wood 
chips or pellets made of various matter, delivered by truck.
"This market is growing very rapidly," said Chris Miles, the chief executive 
of Econergy which installs boilers for individual premises and offers 
heatings systems for whole districts. "We are getting more orders than we 
can service."
BRITAIN LAGS BEHIND
Britain lags far behind its European Union neighbours in the amount of heat 
it gets from biomass.
"At 1 percent, it really is particularly low compared with other EU 
countries. We do need certainly to do a lot better," Pearson said.
"We could have five times that very, very quickly if we had a stronger 
framework," the chief executive of RegenSW, Matthew Spencer, told the 
conference.
The trouble is, many people have no idea biomass exists as an option, how it 
works, or how much its costs.
The government's own Biomass Task Force estimates that the technology could 
meet 7 percent of UK heat demand by 2015, cutting carbon emissions by 2.7 
million tonnes of CO2. Its backers say the figure could be much higher with 
support.
But they warn that the biomass bubble could easily burst if there is a big 
downturn in gas prices. Longer-term certainty is needed to attract the 
capital required to build district heating networks, they say.
District heating involves whole neighbourhoods or even towns being connected 
to one heat source. Unlike old communal heating networks, which did not 
allow residents to set the temperature of their homes, modern systems offer 
much greater control.
Conference delegates said current grants to buy boilers were not enough to 
spur widespread biomass heating, while planning obstacles hinder district 
heating and a lack of public awareness about the benefits holds bac
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-09-13T102853Z_01_NOA337681_RTRUKOC_0_ENERGY-BRITAIN-BIOMASS.xml&archived=False
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Reuters , Sept 11, 2006
Aid must continue for biomass-coal power, say producers
By Daniel Fineren
LONDON (Reuters) - The UK government must take care when redeploying the 
support it now gives to power producers who cut carbon emissions by burning 
organic matter at coal-fired power plants, generators said.
Co-firing biomass, which can be wood chips, sewage sludge or 
specially-produced grains and plants, is one of the most cost effective ways 
of cutting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are among 
the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
"I do hope the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) doesn't kill that 
potential," Roy Westwood of E.ON UK's renewables division said at the 
Bionenergy 2006 conference in Weston-Super-Mare, western England, last week.
He added that co-firing could vanish as quickly as it has grown if the 
conditions created by the government are not right.
Co-firing in British coal-fired power plants has been nurtured through its 
infancy by the government through its Renewables Obligation, a policy which 
requires power suppliers to source a percentage of electricity from such 
sources.
That is starting to change as the government looks to leave co-firing to 
stand on its own two feet while it brings up other low carbon technologies, 
such as wave and tidal power.
In a follow up to an energy review published earlier this year, the DTI is 
looking at reducing incentives to use some forms of biomass by introducing a 
banding system for different energy sources.
It says that too much support for the technology could stifle growth of 
other nascent forms of renewable energy and gobble up more than its fair 
share of biomass, leaving nothing for the wood panel industry or dedicated 
biomass power plants.
"We are concerned about the impact on other biomass users," Kristian 
Armstrong, who is responsible for the Renewables Obligation at the DTI, told 
the conference.
In the longer term, the government may introduce a banding system whereby 
some types of biomass, such as energy crops, would get more long-term 
support than others, to encourage the growing of such crops in Britain while 
freeing up wood chips for other users.
The government already plans to boost incentives to burn energy crops in 
coal-fired power stations from April next year.
The long term investment environment for biomass co-firing will remain 
unclear until the DTI completes its review of renewables funding next year.
Westwood, of German-owned E.ON, said uncertainty over the long term future 
of co-firing was discouraging big investment in the technology and his 
counterpart at rival German-owned generator RWE npower agreed.
"Long-term planning is what we need in this business," npower's Mike Evans 
said.
KEY CARBON WEAPON
Although it thinks co-firing could become viable without government support 
within the next decade, the DTI's Armstrong said it was still a key weapon 
in Britain's struggle to reduce carbon emissions from coal plants. He noted 
that technology to capture carbon dioxide from coal and bury it was still 
being developed.
"There's a lot of talk about carbon sequestration, but that's a long way off 
and it also looks like its going to be expensive," said Armstrong.
In the meantime, the importance of co-firing should not be forgotten, 
generators said.
RWE npower's Mike Evans said that co-firing at UK coal-fired power plants 
had probably cut 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the last 12 months.
Jeremy Woods of Imperial College London said his research showed that 
biomass produced at least 900 grammes less CO2 than coal does for every 
kilowatt hour of electricity generated.

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