Green gas - or biogas – can be made during a composting-like process that breaks down food waste and other material that normally gets dumped straight into landfill or burnt in incinerators. Britain currently wastes around 18m tonnes of food alone a year, which could produce enough biogas to supply over 700,000 homes.
Ninety percent of homes in Britain are connected to the gas main and nearly two-thirds of us have a dual-fuel supplier (electricity and gas).
Householders who sign up to Ecotricity's deal will be supplied from January, although initially their gas will come from conventional natural gas. It is hoped that a small percentage of biogas will be injected into the national grid later in the year.
The company, which has about 30,000 electricity customers, said it wanted to eventually source 50% of its gas tariff from biogas and would match British Gas on dual-fuel pricing.
The owner of Ecotricity is reported to be planning to invest about £50m to build two green gas plants to make the biogas, but would also look at buying in biogas from other sources, including suppliers in Holland.
The National Grid recently produced a report on biogas suggesting that between 15% - 48% of our domestic gas supplies could be met in this way. Some materials such as wood are included in these figures so it isn’t clear if the materials destined for bio-mass projects are counted twice.
Extra momentum for UK biogas should arrive in 2011, when the government is due to introduce a renewable heat incentive, giving financial assistance to generators of heat from renewable sources, from householders using ground-source heat pumps to companies supplying green gas such as Ecotricity.
See www.ecotricity.co.uk for more details on green gas.
See www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Media+Centre/Documents/biogas.htm for a small report on the feasibility of using green gas.
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