Thursday, 14/11/2024 | 10:25 GMT+7
Industry experts have warned that the long term trend for energy prices looks set to rise by as much as 10 per cent over coming years. With increasing energy costs, all farm businesses continually need to assess energy use and identify energy saving opportunities, many often will require little or no need for capital spend.
Ruth Kendal, Rural economy consultant at ADAS, says:
"Farmers and land owners need to assess farm operations to ensure they are
as resource efficient as possible to sustain profitability.
"Saving energy, water and inputs have always been a priority for farmers –
resourceful land managers realise the positive effect efficient resource use
has on profitability. Understanding your energy use is the first step to
realising significant savings on your energy bills and to identify areas where
energy can be used more efficiently."
There is a clear link between resource efficiency and financial savings, but
now farmers are also under additional pressure to ensure their environmental
performance is up to scratch.
Like other commercial sectors, agriculture has targets to meet in the Low
Carbon TransitionPlan, a government White Paper designed to move the UK towards a
more sustainable future. Agriculture, however, has a complex relationship with
the environment, action to reduce carbon emissions in one area of the business
may actually lead to an increase in output elsewhere.
Ruth continues: "A good example is outsourcing the disposal of farm waste as
it may reduce an operation’s direct emissions, but greenhouse gas output
associated with transport and processing may ultimately lead to an increase in
the overall emissions total."
"Farmers could also look to save energy and create an income stream by
installing a renewable energy system that is covered by the Government’s new
Feed-in Tariff scheme. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has
used powers in the Energy Act 2008 to introduce the Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs)
system to incentivise small scale (less than 5MW), low carbon electricity
generation. The FITs scheme went live on 1 April 2010.
Through the use of FiTs the Government hopes to encourage deployment of
additional low carbon electricity generation, particularly by organisations, businesses,
communities and individuals who are not traditionally engaged in the
electricity market.
This "clean energy cashback" income stream will allow many people to
invest in small scale low carbon electricity, in return for a guaranteed
payment both for the electricity they generate and export. The CSR of 20
October 2010 also announced that FITs will be reviewed in 2012, unless higher
than expected deployment requires an early review. The Government has
identified scope to cut FIT costs by 10 per cent, to be achieved as part of its
next review.
Small-scale low-carbon electricity technologies eligible (thích hợp) for FITs
are:
• Wind
• Solar photovoltaics (PV)
• Hydro
• Anaerobic digestion and
• Domestic scale microCHP (with a capacity of 2kW or less)
• Domestic scale microCHP pilot will support up to 30,000 installations with a
review to start when the 12,000th installation is completed
• Solid or liquid biomass technologies continue to be supported under the
Renewables Obligation (RO) at all scales
The main amount paid by the Feed-In Tariffs varies depending on the size and type of system."
Depending on circumstances, a more sustainable solution
could be to build the infrastructure to extract energy from waste. Ultimately,
however, each farm is different and a bespoke approach is needed to help land
managers improve their resource efficiency.
Farm Resource Efficiency Delivered is an ADAS service for farmers, growers and
processors. It will deliver cost savings by increasing the efficiency in which
energy water and nutrients are used and will identify opportunities for energy
generation.
The benefits to farmers of this service will be reduced costs, improved
environmental performance, reduction in their carbon footprint, compliance with
legislation and becoming more sustainable by improving on farm energy, water
and input use. ADAS can also provide practical support and project management
for the implementation of resource efficiency solutions.
farminguk.com