Pressures on

Lovely day spent at Cockle Park Farm, Newcastle looking at this farm scale anaerobic digestor. Its a great piece of kit and one of two demonstration units built to try and encourage the industry. They were funded for two years to prove to the farmers that you can make the 12-15% annual returns by selling the gas into the grid. In Germany they have over 4000 of them across the country producing gas from pig/cow slurry and waste straw.
The government have spent the past 18months holding up the planning, changing the tarifs and generally upsetting the markets and banks that lend to it. Similar to what they have done in the solar market. On one hand they say they want it to happen in the UK on the other they change the rules every six months meaning you have to start the financials from scratch. Frustratingly these guys now only have six months to prove a technology that is 120yrs old.