To pre-treat or not to pre-treat – that is the question?
With BTS’s range of pre-treatment
solutions yielding up to 35% more
biogas, UK farmers can safely break
away from the energy crop model
imposed by many financial investment
companies
What with having to select
from growing crops for human
consumption, animal fodder and
energy production some say UK
farmers are a canny bunch of future
market hedge funders. Whilst they
might not wear pin-striped suits,
wield black umbrellas and reside in
expensive tall glass-coated office
blocks; decisions and predictions
on soil type and crop yields, long
term weather forecasting, supply and
demand forecasting, fads and trends,
costs and potential returns, together
with risk contingency planning,
all have to be carefully taken and
planned well in advance – with the
subtle difference that they put their
livelihood and family’s welfare on
the line year-after-year. Last year
we witnessed profits on crop returns
damaged by an unseasonably cold
Spring with widespread snows,
and 2014 has started with gales
force winds and prolonged rains
bringing widespread saturation and
flooding of farmland. However
above all UK farmers are realists,
almost survivalists; they need to
be - they’ve been farming our lands
successfully for over a thousand years
– innovating, adapting and just getting
on with the day job; generation-aftergeneration.
It is fair to say that farmers are well
aware of Anaerobic Digestion – even
farmers in remote territories cannot
avoid the deluge of unsolicited post
and wall of e-mails as they rush
out to a local agricultural branch
meeting only to discover that a guest
speaker has been roped in to give
a talk on the subject. Of course, if
deployed correctly, AD is beneficial
to the farming community; both
environmental and commercially, and
2013 saw many UK farmers turning
to the anaerobic digestion sector as a
potentially safe option to best futureproof their farm business for the next
20 years; either directly investing in
their own AD plant, or agreeing shotterm contracts to grow and supply AD
feedstock for others.
However many are yet undecided –
many do not want to simply grow
300 Hectares of Maize silage year
in-year out for the next 20 years, so
as to appease and provide comfort to
the bank manager (aka investment
company) that the Bank’s investment
in a 1MWe AD plant is in safe hands
– with UK farms naturally evolving
over the generations to meet ever
changing UK supply and demand
needs as they are passed down from
father to son, many wish to remain
flexible and versatile – a bed fellow
which bank managers may not always
naturally align with once the AD die
has been cast.
At BTS Biogas, having installed over
165 AD plants providing a net power
Continued on page 2...