RO banding review raises serious questions over Coalition commitment to AD

Proposal to exclude anaerobic digestion from the RO under 5MW would make AD target in the Renewable Energy Action Plan “impossible” to achieve.

Government is proposing to exclude Feed-in Tariff eligible (FIT) technologies, including anaerobic digestion, from the Renewables Obligation (RO), it was revealed in today’s RO banding decision. This follows the imposition of a very tight cap on capacity under the Feed-in Tariff, announced last week.

REA Head of Biogas David Collins comments:

“Recognising that anaerobic digestion can meet both energy and environmental objectives, the Coalition Agreement committed to ‘produce a huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion’. This ambition has now been all but dismantled.

“In the space of one week, AD has been squeezed from both sides. On Friday, it was revealed that the annual capacity threshold for AD up to 500kW is to be 4.5MW, which if breached will trigger a tariff reduction of 10%. This would permit only 9-15 typical plants to come through per year before the tariff is reduced. While unwelcome news, we took solace in the knowledge that up to 5MW, AD projects could seek alternative support under the RO.

“Today we have learned that Government will consult on proposals to remove support for AD (and other FIT technologies) under the RO for projects under 5MW. It is rarely practical to build AD above 5MW – only one of the 33 plants supported under the RO today is over 5MW – so this would effectively represent a total withdrawal of support for AD under the RO.

“The REA will fight hard to make the case for AD during the forthcoming consultation, as it meets a range of environmental objectives, has exceptional emissions displacement properties, and offers excellent diversification and job creation opportunities for the rural economy.”

Jonathan Scurlock, Chief Adviser on Renewable Energy and Climate Change at the NFU, comments:

“Today’s announcement undermines the modest increase in ambition achieved for AD under the FIT proposals last week. There just isn’t enough expected here of the multiple environmental benefits of AD and clearly an insufficient budget. Death by reviews is not going to deliver the ‘huge’ increase in energy from AD the Coalition Agreement promised. There are fundamental problems with the approach to important mid-sized investors like farmers which DECC now needs to address.”