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LONDON, England, 2004-10-20 (Refocus Weekly) The British government has created a task force to promote the use of biomass.
The former head of the National Farmers’ Union, Sir Ben Gill, will chair the year-long initiative to increase supplies of biomass and to move towards the government’s target for renewable energy consumption. Since 2002, the government has provided £66 million in capital grants for biomass projects.
The government's Energy White Paper says renewables should supply 10% of UK electricity by 2010 and 20% by 2020. Its Renewables Obligation requires electricity suppliers to source 15% of their electricity from biomass and other renewables by 2015.
“Barriers have to be overcome if we are to establish confidence in the industry, and we want to make it easier for producers to get their biomass out of the fields and forests and on to the market, to make it a viable alternative energy source,” says farming minister Larry Whitty. “We must look to the future in our search for low-carbon energy sources. Biomass energy has the potential to be of huge benefit in terms of combatting climate change, boosting farm diversification and creating more rural jobs.”
The task force is part of a £3.5 million Bio-Energy Infrastructure Scheme that will provide grants to harvest, store, process and supply biomass for energy production. Whitty says that biomass could be key to finding low-carbon energy sources, combating climate change and increasing farm diversification.
“Its potential is clear,” says Gill. “It can make a huge contribution to important agendas for renewable energy, a critical issue within the climate change issue. But biomass struggles to make progress.”
Biomass can produce green power or green heat, and the crops eligible for grants under this scheme are wood fuel including sawdust, short rotation coppice (willow or poplar), tall woody miscanthus grass, other grasses and straw. The government has paid farmers £1 million since 2001 under its Energy Crops Scheme, which gives grants of up to £1,600 per hectare to support biomass crops production.
In its response to the release of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution report on biomass, the government says biomass has the potential to provide a significant contribution to the reduction of CO2 levels if substituted for fossil fuel in the generation of heat and electricity and it has the potential to help significantly towards meeting renewables targets in the electricity supply.
By 2008, the UK government expects to have provided £500 million in capital grants and research funding for renewable energy and low-carbon technologies.
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