Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
Main Page: Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Circular Economy
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on her excellent introduction, which gave a very good flavour of the opportunities offered by the circular economy. It promises a future with great environmental gains but not having waste will also enrich the entire economy. I can think of no better example of this than anaerobic digestion.
At its best, anaerobic digestion takes local farm waste and turns it into soil conditioner and fertiliser, as well as biogas which can be used as energy to run a farm’s tractors or heating to heat local houses. The problem is that the Government are not measuring the benefits correctly. On anaerobic digestion, for example, they are looking only at energy without appreciating that it is also a very low-carbon process; nor are they considering what can be done for soil by using not artificial fertiliser but waste to recondition it. They need to measure everything within that circle in a ranking system, rather than having silos for measuring energy, the level of carbon emission and waste reduction. It all needs to be measured as a whole.
If that happened, the Government’s attitude to, for example, the renewable heat index would change. This is because the measurements have encouraged the use of bigger plants at the cost of smaller, more local ones. That is inefficient because it requires more transport and for maize to be grown specifically for use in the plants instead of utilising waste. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned, food waste is collected in an inefficient way or not at all at the moment. If the Government’s attitude changed, that problem would disappear.
The start made by the anaerobic digestion community is really good. They have moved from about 40 plants six years ago to 170 now. But that is despite a lot of government obstacles. The Government should be encouraging this industry. It has the ability to provide for up to 30% of domestic electricity or gas consumption and deserves to have their full weight behind it.