Energy generated from biomass has a key role to play in helping Scotland to achieve its 100% renewable target by 2020, according to members of the Lifetime Recycling Village.
The Lifetime Recycling Village is currently developing proposals for a closed loop renewable energy and recycling facility in the West of Scotland that will take in up to 1.5 million tonnes of mixed waste a year and recycle and remanufacture all of it without the need for landfill. The three stage process includes recycling, gasification and plasma vitrification.
The Lifetime Recycling Village team has welcomed recent comments made by Mark Hanafin, director of Centrica Energy, in the House of Commons, which emphasised the benefits of energy from biomass in terms of its reliability. Mr Hanafin stressed that biomass was an important renewable energy source as it is not effected by intermittency issues. Through supporting more renewable projects which involve biomass, Lifetime Recycling Village believes that Scotland will place itself in a strong position to meet the ambitious 2020 target.
Neil Gallacher, managing director of LRV, comments: “The advantage of schemes like ours is that we can guarantee a supply of reliable, green electricity. Energy generation from biomass is not affected by unpredictable weather patterns, which can often have an adverse affect on the capacity for other types of renewable energy generation.”
Extracting biomass from the waste stream can bring further benefits, he says: “At our proposed renewable energy and recycling facility, we would take waste that would otherwise be buried in landfill and recycle as much as possible, before extracting the biomass element in order to generate green electricity.”
Increasingly, professionals from across the industry are recognising the benefits of generating energy from biomass. A recent report, produced for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) by consultancy firm Arup, highlighted that electricity generation through biomass from waste has potential to dramatically increase over coming years.
Neil Gallacher believes that this source of energy generation could double by 2020, and almost treble by 2030.