Biomass an Essential Part of Scotland’s Green Energy Mix

Energy generated from biomass has a key role to play in helping Scotland to achieve its 100% renewable target by 2020, members of the Lifetime Recycling Village (LRV) team have stated today.

The Lifetime Recycling Village team welcomed comments made this week 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, commented today that:

“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, said Gallacher:

“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.

Gallacher welcomed the report’s findings that this source of energy generation could double by 2020, and almost treble by 2030:

“With sustained investment and continued support for the renewable energy sources that we know to be most reliable, Scotland can achieve its 100% target of energy needs from renewable sources by 2020. Through this, we can demonstrate to the rest of the world that alternatives to carbon-intensive electricity generation are possible.”