ARTICLE FROM NEW ENERGY WORLD NETWORK:
Biomass could play a key role in helping Scotland reach its ambitious 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020 target, according to project developer Lifetime Recycling Village.
Through supporting more renewable projects which involve biomass, Scotland will place itself in a strong position to meet the ambitious 2020 target, the company said.
While the Scottish government has high hopes for its country becoming a leader in wind and marine power and has facilitated this through ongoing investment, biomass has until recently been largely sidelined.
Scotland’s new Energy Minister Fergus Ewing this month shifted the country’s political focus from wind onto bioenergy by introducing the Renewable Heat Incentive, one of the UK government’s flagship clean energy initiatives. The scheme will now reward producers of renewable heat in Scotland, as well as the rest of the UK, through payments for the energy they produce.
Lifetime Recycling welcomed comments made this week by Mark Hanafin, director of Centrica Energy, in the House of Commons. His comments emphasised the benefits of energy from biomass in terms of its reliability. Hanafin stressed that biomass is an important renewable energy source as it is not affected by intermittency issues.
Lifetime Recycling managing director Neil Gallacher said, ‘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.’
A recent report produced for the Department of Energy and Climate Change by consultancy firm Arup indicated that waste biomass sector is likely to double by 2020.
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