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Biofuel Britain
Last year, British Sugar opened the UK's first commercial-scale bioethanol factory, near Downham Market, Norfolk.
The £20m factory will produce 70 million litres of ethanol this year. It offers greenhouse gas savings of 71 per cent compared with fossil fuels on a life cycle basis, according to the verified findings of an independent life cycle assessor, because of it's state-of-the-art combined heat and power (CHP) facilities. This means around 80 per cent of the energy needed to produce the ethanol is leftover energy from British Sugar's sugar factory next door.
"Major studies and research show that biofuel produces considerably less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel, contrary to what is often reported," says Clare Wenner of the Renewable Energy Association. "Significant greenhouse gas savings of 60 per cent and more are not unusual if renewable energy in the factory is used, normally through CHP use. Backing this up is work done for the Government by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, demonstrating that UK-produced ethanol from wheat can save as little as seven per cent or as much as 77 per cent carbon compared with petrol, depending on the agricultural production and the energy practices employed within the factory." British Sugar's site produces so much energy it actually exports 50MW of electricity back to the national grid. It is also home to the UK's largest glasshouse, from which excess CO2 gas, low-grade heat and water are used to cultivate some 70 million tomatoes annually. These are then sold on to Sainsbury's and Tesco. Other by-products are: high-quality top soil, washed from the beet, sent to places such as London's Hyde Park and animal food production, turning waste fibre from sugar beet into high-energy farm feed pellets.
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This factory, producing enough ethanol annually for two million cars (out of 30 million plus on UK roads) to run on a five per cent ethanol blend, is small scale even by UK standards. The next step is a £200m ethanol factory, under construction in Saltend, Hull. Ensus is another company planning to open a large-scale wheat-to-ethanol factory next year. It will also make around 350,000 tonnes of high-protein animal feed a year - as well as producing ethanol.
There are several giant ethanol plants being built in northern England, to the alarm of many, who warn that vast swathes of British countryside will become a monocultural desert. Critics complain the developments will also drive up food prices as precious wheat supplies are diverted from our mouths.
Yet the factories insist that they will merely take advantage of the UK's surplus wheat - an estimated three to four million tonnes each year - much of which, like sugar, was previously exported and dumped on world markets, thereby depressing global prices to the detriment of emerging countries.
None of the above findings should come as a surprise, says Wenner. "The arguments surrounding the production of biofuels have been massively simplified and are so much more complicated than is usually reported," she says.
