2008 West Midlands Bioenergy Conference Harper Adams University College

1. Bioenergy:
Turning Opportunity into Commercial Reality
The UK Bioenergy Sector Overview
Sir Ben Gill CBE (MA(Cantab)
Harper Adams University College
Tuesday December 16th 2008

2. Understanding the Big Picture?
• Projections simply take recent events and then find
– The trend line and
– Extrapolate this forward into the future assuming none of
the fundamentals have changed
• Most newspaper articles are based on projections
with limited attempts to forecast
• Forecasts take the projections and then adapt them
to take account of the changed circumstances and
can suggest to us what we can do to change the
trend line
17/12/2008 15:03 2

3. What are the issues?
• Climate Change and its effects on the World and UK
specifically
• A fundamental change in the World‘s power balance
with the owners of the key resources assuming greater
influence
– Capital
– Oil and Gas
– Mineral stocks
• Population growth and wealth growth leading to
increased demands for
– Food
– Energy
– Water

4. What does the future hold for
us?
• ―Today‘s consumer has become accustomed to, as
of right, access to cheap, safe food, produced to a
consistent quality and in an environmentally benign
and animal welfare friendly manner‖
• Within 10 years if we do nothing, possibly only two
or if we are lucky three, of these attributes will be
on offer
• If we ignore the signs for change there is an
inevitability that those living in the ‗Western‘ world
will experience substantial reductions in their
standards of living

5. Climate Change and the consequences
for the West Midlands
• Globally
– Temperatures will continue to rise (faster than earlier predicted)
– Weather patterns will become stormier
– Rainfall patterns will change
– Persistent droughts will become increasingly common
– Forest fires become a much more common feature
– Water becomes the major limiting factor
– Increasing Salinity compromises ability to grow current crop plants
• For the West Midlands
– Efficient use of water becomes a critical issue
– Extended growing season
– New pests and diseases
– Extreme variations in weather patterns become more common

6. A Rapidly changing World
• The demise of the USA as the leader of the World
• The currency and banking crisis has far reaching effects
– On relationships between countries
– On market volatility
– On re-evaluation of priorities
• The emerging economies of the East:
– China
• Foreign exchange reserves hit $2 trillion
– India and the rest of Asia
• The increased power of the oil and gas rich countries
– Russia and the countries of the former USSR
– Angola
– Brazil and South America

7. 21st Century Neo-
Colonialism
• The rush for land was triggered by this year's food crisis
and the European push for biofuels. The South Korean
firm Daewoo made headlines in November 2008 when
it bought a 99-year lease on 1.3 million hectares of
Madagascar to grow maize and oil palm. The deal is far
from unusual.
• China has already acquired large amounts of land and
oil palm plantations in neighbouring Asian countries
• Water Trading between countries becomes a major
industry
• China has also acquired access to vast reserves of
minerals and oil and gas around the world
• New World strategic alliances are being forged that

8. Population living in A City %
Region 1950 2000 2030
World 30 47 60
Africa 15 37 53
Asia 17 38 54
Europe 52 73 81
Latin Amer/Carib 42 75 84
North America 64 77 85
Oceania 62 74 77
17/12/2008 15:03 8

9. Increasing Global Food demands
• By 2050 the predictions are that world food demand will double as
a result of
– Increasing world population (50%) & wealthy lifestyle (50%)
– The UN is predicting increased demand for meat across the world by
2016 to reach:
• Beef +30%
• Pigmeat +50%
• Poultry +25%
• World Bank estimates would suggest that the number of people in
developing countries in households that have incomes above
£8,000 per annum will rise from 352 million in 2000 to 2.1 billion
by 2030.
• Current trends in bioenergy production could add as much to the
demand for increased production as the needs for additional food
• This would mean that in 40 years we will have to triple total food
production from a shrinking area of cultivatable land

10. Changing Dietary Needs
• 1.1 billion people live on less that 50p/day; 75% of them
suffer under-nutrition and hunger (calorie deficit).
• 2.7 billion people live on less than £1/day
• by £1 per day, most hunger (calorie) problems solved,
but not malnutrition.
• Between £1 and £5 per day people eat more meat,
dairy products, fruits, vegetables & edible oils, causing
rapid growth in demand for raw agricultural
commodities.
• Meat uses more land to produce the same amount of
calorific intake than crops
• After £5 per day, people buy more processing, services,
packaging, variety, and luxury forms, but not more raw
agricultural commodities.

11. World Total Coarse Grains production
Source International Grains Council
2,000
1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
Production
Consumption
800
Closing Stocks
600
400
200
0
2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09

12. World Total Grain Stocks
Source International Grains Council
stocks/consumption%
21.00%
20.00%
19.00%
18.00%
stocks/consumption%
17.00%
16.00%
15.00%
2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09

13. Volatile Wheat Markets

14. Brent Crude Oil Prices 2007/08
$US per barrel 12/12/08

15. Oil a finite resource?
Latest
International
Energy
Agency
figures
predict that
world demand
in 2008 fell by
only 200,000
barrels per
day and that it
will rise again
in 2009 BUT
China now
expected to
reduce
consumption 15
17/12/2008 15:03

16. Canadian Tar Sands
•Account for 175 billion barrels
of oil
•Expect to spend $100 bn
capital to extract
•By 2015 expect to produce
3 million barrels per day
•Accounts for 8% of
Canadian GHG emissions
•Expensive to extract
17/12/2008 15:03 16

17. Declining Land Availability
17/12/2008 15:03 17

18. Clean drinking Water:
An increasingly Scarce Resource
17/12/2008 15:03 18

19. World Water Resource
(light greens and blues show less resource
darker colours more resource)
17/12/2008 15:03 19

20. Water v. Energy
• Water is needed to generate energy. Energy is needed
to deliver water. Both resources are limiting the other—
and both may be running short. Is there a way out?
• Without water, people die. Without energy, we cannot
grow food, run computers, or power homes, schools or
offices.
• We cannot build more power plants without realizing
that they impinge on our freshwater supplies. And we
cannot build more water delivery and cleaning facilities
without driving up energy demand. Solving the dilemma
requires new national policies that integrate energy and
water solutions and innovative technologies that help to
boost one resource without draining the other.

21. An increasing Trade in Water:
Food v. Lifestyle
• Around the world, water consumption will double in the next 20 years,
twice the rate of global population growth, a Goldman Sachs report
predicted in March.
• Governments around the globe are seeking drastic solutions to satisfy
increasingly thirsty users.
– Australia will spend the equivalent of £3 billion this year buying back water
from the Murray-Darling Basin to return it to stressed wetlands and rivers.
– Cyprus and Barcelona are importing water in tankers and building
desalination plants to make sea water drinkable.
– Southern Californian farmers have fallowed land to sell their water to cities
amid a drought and diminishing flows from the Colorado River.
– After growing maize for 20 years on the banks of the Tagus River in central
Spain, Manuel Vicente Piriz didn't plant this spring. Instead he sold his water
to arid towns in the south for €216,000, more than he would have earned
on the crop.
–

22. Biomass Task Force Report
said
2005
• We waste in the current production of electricity more than enough
heat to heat the entire country for free
• We currently put to landfill around 5 to 10 million tonnes of
reclaimed timber per annum
• While heat accounts for nearly 40% of our energy use, the
potential for renewable use has not been recognised
• CHP and biomass heat have promised much and delivered little:
Why?
Energy Bill 2008
•Repeated many of the questions asked and answered in the Biomass
Task Force
•Set key targets
•But has it
•explained this to the key people who make the decisions:
•The planners and planning committees
•The developers
•Integrated and embedded the philosophy throughout all layers of
Government

23. Biomass & Electricity
• Current coal fired energy conversion efficiency
25% to 35%
• To be replaced by:
– Similar number of gas fired OR
– Larger number of CHP facilities based on biomass
• Need to overlay local maps of
– Heat need
– Electricity need
– Biomass availability

24. The Biomass Task Force identified the
following barriers in 2005
3/10 5/10
• Ignorance of the potential
• Ignorance of the availability 3/10 5/10
• Ignorance of the transformation 2/10 4/10
technologies that are available
• Ignorance of the economic 2/10 4/10
dynamics 3/10 4/10
• Ignorance of the potential carbon
1/10 3/10
savings
• Ignorance by some of the experts National West
• IGNORANCE Midlands

25. A Wasteful society
• We probably waste as much food as we eat:
– Supermarket sell by dates
– BOGOFs
– Processing rejects
– Storage losses
– Left on plate
– Household waste
• We still waste enough heat in the way we generate electricity to
heat the whole country for free
• We are still putting to land fill between 5 and 10 million tonnes of
timber per annum
• The role of the Waste Framework Directive
17/12/2008 15:03 25

26. “Waste” as an Asset
• Removal of the stigma attached to the word waste
• Realisation of the value of ―Co-products‖
• Conversion of these products to produce energy
• Dry wastes by thermal conversion
– Combustion
– Pyrolysis
– Gasification
• Wet Wastes by anaerobic digestion or composting
• Creation of an holistic strategy towards the use of all plant products
between food and non food and fuel
• Creation of chains of utility
• ―Waste not, want not‖
17/12/2008 15:03 26

27. What potential has Biomass and
Bioenergy
for the West Midlands?
Substantial.
• You already have some good working demonstrations
in Worcestershire County Council
• You have Europe‘s biggest sewage works which
converts all the waste through anaerobic digestion
• You have the South Shropshire Biodigester using
domestic organic waste
• You have the resource available in
– Wood from forestry and woodlands
– Energy crops such as miscanthus and short rotation willow
– Waste food materials

28. What does Renewable Energy offer for
the West Midlands?
• Against the inevitable trend of rising fuel prices it offers
– Security of supply
– Stabilisation of the base price
– A new income stream for rural areas
• Against the increasing problems of climate change it
offers
– An opportunity to significantly reduce greenhouse gas
emissions
– Benefits to the general environment and biodiversity

29. And the Role of Government
should be?
• Nationally to
– Set realistic targets and timetables and the facilities to deliver them
– Ensure that we all work to the same policy objectives
– Invest in research to deliver ever more efficient processes
– Provide a simple and effective information stream
• Regionally to
– Interpret the targets to the region
– Identify the regional infrastructure that is needed to support renewables
– Deliver the information and advice to industry
– Ensure that the planning policy meets these needs
• Locally to
– Integrate the use of biomass into local business and regional plans
– Lead debates about the real issues that underpin the options available
– Set examples with the use of renewables in the buildings that are publically
owned
– Deliver the integrated planning policy showing leadership

30. Reducing Renewable Energy
Costs

31. What can we do?
• Recognise the problem and the issues
• Develop a meaningful strategy that can meet the needs of food,
energy and the environment
• Debate the wider implications with the wider society to remove the
blockages based on ignorance of the reality
• Understand that efficiency of production and increasing
productivity is critical not only in meeting the needs of future food
supplies but also in reducing the ―carbon‖ footprint of food
production
• Adapt our structures so that all in the food and energy chain can
seek to benefit from the radically changes dynamics of the market
place that is set to evolve by the creation of real partnerships
• Think positively in a world that is all too often dominated by doom
and gloom
17/12/2008 15:03 31

32. 3rd prize in World Health & Safety
17/12/2008 15:03 32

33. 2nd prize in World Health & Safety
17/12/2008 15:03 33

34. And The Winner is
17/12/2008 15:03 34