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Resort firm plans farm power plants
WORK to create a £2.5m environmentally-friendly power plant is set to start later this year after planners approved a Blackpool company's farm-based project.
Farmgen, based on Whitegate Drive, is the company behind the anaerobic digestion (AD) plant at Dryholme Farm, near Silloth, Cumbria.
Now planning permission for the rural power plant has been granted it is believed it could be fully operational and supplying electricity to the National Grid by early next year.
Farmgen says the plant – which will create enough continuous power for more than 1,000 homes – will provide a significant boost to the rural economy.
Farmgen has ambitious expansion plans for the next year, with several other projects in the pipeline. It believes other similar AD operations will soon be commonplace across the UK.
Work has also started on Farmgen's AD project at Carr Farm, near Warton.
That 2.5m plant is set to generate 1MW of electricity, which will then be exported to the National Grid, again providing enough continuous electricity for more than 1,000 homes.
Ed Cattigan, chief operating officer of Farmgen, said: "We are delighted to have received planning permission for the Dryholme Farm operation and look forward to seeing it come on-stream.
"We believe there is huge potential for anaerobic digestion across the UK. Similar plants are already commonplace in Northern Europe, with more than 5,000 running in Germany, providing benefits for their local communities, and there is no reason why they should not be commonplace here in Britain in the future.
"We believe when the farming community across the country sees what we are creating at Dryholme Farm, and the benefits it will bring, they will become more and more interested in exploring AD as a way of diversifying and of bringing marginal land back into production.
"Our view is we are at the start of something really exciting for the farming industry across the UK."
The Dryholme plant will use grass silage and other crops from fields surrounding the farm to create biogas, which is then used to generate electricity.
Farmgen's experts believe the UK's farming sector could sustain up to 1,000 similar plants – producing a high nutrient biofertiliser as a by-product and helping to protect and sustain existing land used for food production.
Earlier this year the company unveiled a 30m investment to create the biggest 'energy farming' expansion programme in the UK.
Planning applications are being prepared for two more AD plants in Lancashire and Staffordshire.
This is just the first tranche of what will be the UK's biggest ever expansion of farm-based power generation.
The new AD plant will be broadly carbon-neutral and, compared with other renewable energy generators, such as wind turbines, has less visual impact.
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Wednesday 30 May 2012
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