Ecotricity plans to offer biogas to households
Friday 27 November 2009
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| Ecotricity founder Dale Vince said he expected the biogas sector to expand quickly |
Ecotricity, which has traditionally operated in the wind sector, has announced its intention to move into the gas market from January 2010, initially supplying conventional gas and increasing the green mix over time as it invests and builds more biogas sources.
Company founder Dale Vince said that Ecotricity was getting involved in gas production as it expected the sector to expand quickly and believed it would be easier to get planning permission for anaerobic digestion plants compared to wind projects.
The company is set to use the same business model as it has with wind energy - taking the money that customers spend on electricity bills and using that to build new sources of green electricity - but in this case it will be investing in biogas production.
Consumers would not receive biogas pumped to their homes, but would be paying for more of the gas to be added to the grid.
Ecotricity plans to buy green gas from other UK producers, although no contracts are yet in place, as well as building two of its own biogas plants for around £50 million. The company claimed that it would deliver biogas at no extra cost, matching British Gas on both its standard gas and dual-fuel price in each region.
Mr Vince said that offering green gas not only provided householders an option outside "multinational energy companies," but also helped unhook Britain from its "addiction" to foreign gas supplies and kept waste out of landfill.
He said: "We're the real British Gas now. We're kick-starting the market to move Britain from brown to green gas, turning people's gas bills into green gas mills, just as we've been doing with windmills for over a decade. "
"People can now have complete control of where the money they spend on their energy bills goes, and ultimately where their energy will come from. Nobody has to carry on giving their money to the big multinational energy companies, who seem determined to keep burning whatever in the world they can get their hands on like there's no tomorrow."
Biogas
Biogas is a by-product of Anaerobic Digestion (AD) in which micro-organisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen.
The food waste and other material that makes up the feedstock would normally go to landfill or burnt in incinerators. Ecotricity claimed that Britain currently wastes around 18 million tonnes of food a year, which it said could produce enough biogas to supply over 700,000 homes.
Ultimately, the company said that it plans to create biogas from emerging next-generation technologies such as special strains of algae, which it described as a "potentially endless source of energy."
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