Farm leads way with opening of waste digester

Farmer Neil Gemmell expects the £1.6m investment at Clayton Hall Farm, near Emley, to start paying off after five years. The digester produces gas to drive a generator supplying 400 KW of electricity to the grid and feeding its waste heat through farm buildings and then back into the digestion process.

Food processing businesses will give Mr Gemmell fuel for free and in some cases pay him to be an alternative to landfill tips. He is hoping for some canteen waste contracts and remains open to the possibility of taking in domestic organic waste if anyone can get organised to collect it. Meanwhile, he is growing 40 acres of grass and maize to keep the digester topped up as required.

The process will leave a residue with some value as fertiliser but he expects to use that on his own fields.

Anaerobic digestion gets lip service as an ideal farm diversification with spin-off for carbon targets, but the subsidies allotted have not generated anything like the rush into solar panels. A farmer syndicate is running a two-megawatt plant near Driffield. A federation of food businesses is building another at Doncaster and Yorkshire Water run several on sewage. But this is thought to be the first farm-based plant in West Yorkshire.

Mr Gemmell expects it to take around two and a half men’s worth of hours a week – mainly dealing with deliveries – and to be his own main job from here on. His dairy herd was finished off by TB two years ago but he was in the course of disposing of it already. He still has a 50-suckler beef herd.

It was around five years ago he began planning the digester. He paid tribute to a Kirklees Council adviser, Ruth Sherratt in the Environment Unit, who helped him through the bureaucracy.

A not-for-profit company, CO2Sense, set up by Yorkshire Forward, put up £600,000 to be repaid once the plant is generating income, and provided advice. The rest of the funding came from a loan from HSBC and a hire-purchase agreement with the manufacturers of some of the machinery.

Dewsbury MP Simon Reevell cut the ribbon to officially open the plant a week ago. He said: “The government remains committed to generating 15 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020. This is a great example of the sort of project that will enable us to achieve this without damaging the appearance of the countryside.”

Making sense of green energy

CO2Sense says: “Because we’re not trying to sell a particular type of renewable energy, we make sure that organisations install the technologies that will deliver the best possible return for their investment. We help find markets and we can help get capital investment.”

Rick Hamilton can answer questions about the Emley project – [email protected] or 0113 237 8429. Contact [email protected] or call 0113 237 8419 to discuss other possible projects.