The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is planning to launch a competition, in collaboration with UK wetland managers, to encourage the use of biomass arisings from ongoing wetland management activities for bio-energy.
With this move, the DECC said it aims to address the need for increased provision of sustainable bio-energy feed-stocks that comply with emission standards when used to generate energy, while avoiding conflicts with land use change and food production activities.
Because land management leads to a huge amount of waste biomass, the DECC plans to invite industry or academic parties to develop an efficient process for harvesting and conversion of biomass arisings into bio-energy.
As part of this initiative, the department will provide funding to projects that develop and demonstrate an efficient bio-energy system that can optimise existing wetland management activities and utilise the biomass arisings, such as reeds, rushes, grasses and fen.
The department is currently exploring the level of interest that industry and academia are likely to have in the prospective competition and the competency of the market to meet the requirement.
The Spending Review of November 2010 announced funding of about £200m for low carbon technologies across the energy sector, including support to bio-energy projects, to be spent through over four financial years from April 2011.
