What is biofuel?
- Advanced biofuels are made from waste materials
- These include agricultural residues like straw
- Using complex processing techniques they can be converted into a wide range of transport fuels for roads and aviation.
WASTE food to power your company car. It’s already been done on a small scale with waste restaurant oil being recycled to power cars and vans.
But the government wants it on an industrial scale – so it wants production facilities that will convert waste into biofuels.
So today (10 December 2014) green fuel industry gets a shot in the arm with a £25 million competition to build advanced biofuel plants.
The Department for Transport funding is supported by significant private sector investment and will enable the construction of up to 3 demonstration biofuel plants, the first of their kind in the UK it says.
Transport Minister Baroness Kramer commented:
“This government is helping the transition to greener, cleaner fuel. Advanced biofuels will play an increasingly important role in lowering carbon emissions from transport and these fuel plants will help ensure the UK is leading the way in building our capacity.
“This country has world-class research capabilities and I want the development of green technology to be part of this success story. This will not only benefit the environment but boost investment in Britain.”
The Department for Transport says that the biofuel produced by the chosen technology must show a minimum of 60% greenhouse gas emissions reductions compared with fossil fuels.
The funding will be made available over 3 years. The competition will be run in 2 stages with a detailed expression of interest stage for potential bidders open until 13 February 2015, followed by full proposals in June 2015. The competition expects plants backed by this funding to be operational by December 2018 and produce at least 1 million litres of biofuel a year.
