Farm leaders have expressed deep disappointment over proposed cuts to Feed-in Tariffs (Fits) for anaerobic digestion (AD) plants.
They warn that any cuts to tariffs could sound the “death knell” for the future of on-farm biogas installations.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has issued a consultation which says from January 2017 tariffs for plants under 500kW will be cut by 27%.
Meanwhile, the tariff for plants over 500kW will disappear completely, moving from 7.8p/kWh to zero. Tariffs for existing installations will remain unchanged.
The government also wants to minimise the use of crops as a feedstock for AD plants, so is looking at limiting Fits payments to electricity generated from biogas derived from waste and residues.
Jonathan Scurlock, NFU chief adviser on renewable energy, said the union would be fighting the proposed cuts, which came on top of slashed support for the solar and biomass industries.
“Yet again, this government seems determined to throttle the life out of the emerging renewable energy market,” he said.
Dr Scurlock pointed out that only two years ago the Fits for small- and medium-scale AD plants were 14-15p/kWh, nearly three times the rates proposed from 2017.
But there had been no corresponding reduction in capital costs.
“The multiple environmental and soil management benefits from widespread deployment of on-farm anaerobic digesters will be lost, including the huge potential for avoiding farmyard methane emissions from manure and slurry – a bit of an own-goal for Decc, given that this is a powerful greenhouse gas,” he said.
Charlotte Morton, chief executive of the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association, said the consultation did nothing to address Decc’s fundamental lack of ambition for AD and community-scale renewables.
“Instead, it proposes restrictions to plant sizes and feedstocks that will make it even harder to deploy viable AD plants using waste, crops or agricultural residues.
“Removing support for new plants above 500kW is completely unjustified and will kill off projects which could otherwise have delivered Decc’s objectives while representing good value for money.”
But TFA chief executive George Dunn said he welcomed the move. “The TFA has been the only farming organisation calling on government to stop the public subsidy of crop-fed AD systems, because of the impact on land rents and soil management.”