£1m boost for biomass production
THE Tees farming industry has welcomed news that £1m is to be made available to help boost biomass production in the region.
The money, secured by regional development agency One NorthEast through the Rural Development Programme for England, follows an announcement earlier this month that it is to put £1.35m behind beefing up the biofuels chain.
John Seymour, spokesman for North East Biofuels, a coalition of farmers, traders and processors, mainly involved in growing and processing plants for liquid oil production, said the news was “another step in the right direction”. But with just 25 growers in the region under contract to supply biomass to power stations, many issues still needed to be addressed, he said.
“The difficulty is that if you grow a specific crop, like willow, it only has one market. If farmers grow wheat for bioethanol or rape for biodiesel if anything happens to those processing plants they have a ready-made alternative market in the food industry. There’s not much else you can do with mycanthus or willow and that’s discouraged farmers in the past from growing it.”
One NorthEast predicts that demand for locally grown biomass will increase from the 2,500t currently marketed each year to more than 12,000t over the next 12 months. It said the sector could grow to around £1.5m by 2013.
