Conservatives commit to incentive for heat from AD

The Conservatives have given their strongest indication yet that there are committed to introducing a subsidy to encourage renewable heat generation, and have identified anaerobic digestion as one of the main technologies that will benefit from it.

Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham yesterday (October 4), cabinet office minister Oliver Letwin laid out the party's detailed proposals for its ‘green growth' programme.

He said: “Our incentive for renewable heat will bring forward the generation of heat from waste and other renewable sources – a crucial part of cutting carbon and maintaining energy security.”

And, he specifically picked out anaerobic digestion as a focus for the incentive, claiming that “our incentive for renewable heat will give us a huge expansion of anaerobic digestion, enabling us to produce huge supplies of home-produced, low carbon gas”.

AD, which is set to be the subject of an Action Plan in November 2011, has emerged as one of the coalition government's preferred technologies for waste treatment, with the Con-Lib Dem agreement pledging to bring about a huge increase in its use (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, in recent weeks, organics recycling bodies have called for certainty over the Renewable Heat Incentive, due to concerns that the proposed subsidy, which is scheduled to be introduced in April 2011, will be either watered down or scrapped as a result of the Spending Review on October 20 (see letsrecycle.com story).

In his speech, which was focused on energy security, Mr Letwin also confirmed that a Green Investment Bank would be included in the party's green growth plans as a means of offering financial support to the development of new waste and energy infrastructure.

And, he hailed the contribution that the Feed-in Tariff subsidy for small scale renewables projects could make, claiming that: “Our system of feed-in tariffs will encourage micro-generation, stimulate diversity and decentralisation of our power supply, and turn hundreds of thousands of houses into sources of energy.”

Spelman

Mr Letwin was speaking in the same session as environment secretary Caroline Spelman, who focused her speech on the wider role of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – discussing topics such as farming and flood prevention efforts.

Mrs Spelman pointed to the work being undertaken in conjunction with the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and also acknowledged the on-going waste policy review, which was announced at the Futuresource event in June (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, she did not divulge any further information on the future of the Waste & Resources Action Programme, which was not included on a Cabinet Office list of 177 quangos that are under review or set to be abolished that was leaked last month (see letsrecycle.com story).

“So my starting point for making those savings is bureaucracy, waste and quangos. I inherited from Labour a department with over 90 quangos,” she said. “In five months I've already cut that by over a third. But that may not be enough.”