§ Sue DoughtyTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the use of(a) household and municipal, (b) industrial and (c) agricultural waste streams as potential sources for bio-fuels through bio-refinery technologies; and if she will make a statement. [166906]
§ Alun MichaelA study by E4tech for the Department of Trade and Industry made the following estimates for the proportion of the UK's electricity demand that could be met by 2020 from various types of waste biomass: 2.2 per cent. from the combustion, gasification and anaerobic digestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste; 0.5 per cent. from the gasification and anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge; 1.9 per cent. from the combustion and gasification of straw; and less than 0.2 per cent. each from food waste, wood processing waste, farm waste and forestry residues.
The Waste Implementation Programme was established last year to provide support to local authorities in assessing and establishing alternative new technologies with particular reference to achieving the landfill diversion targets for biodegradable municipal waste. The New Technologies sub-programme aims to establish up to five demonstrator plants by 2005 end with at least five additional plants initiated by 2006.
Tallow derived from rendering animal by-products can be burnt to produce energy. 280,000 tonnes of tallow from animals slaughtered under the over-30-months (slaughter) scheme have already been sold to renderers to power their boilers. The Rural Payments 1187W Agency recently signed a contract to sell 110,000 tonnes of stockpiled tallow to a commercial company for energy production.
Around 120 million litres of waste vegetable oil are produced in the UK each year, which could produce about 115 million litres of biodiesel. 1 million litres of biodiesel from waste vegetable oil are currently sold each month in the UK and it is likely that this will increase once the ban on used cooking oil in animal feed comes into effect in November 2004. Recent advances in biotechnology are opening up opportunities to produce bioethanol from ligno-cellulosic feedstocks such as wood, straw and organic waste, using gasification and hydrolysis, although large-scale commercialisation is unlikely for some years.