IT’S a case of waste not want not down at Clayton Hall farm.
Staff at the Clayton West farm are producing enough electricity to power 650 homes using just food waste.
Neil Gemmell and his wife Dawn have set up a green power station at the farm, which uses anaerobic digestion technology to turn food waste into clean electricity.
The 400 kilowatt station off Wakefield Road is the first of its kind in West Yorkshire.
And where there’s muck there’s brass – because after five years the Gemmells could be making some £500,000 a year by selling the electricity they produce back to the National Grid.
The pioneering technology is extremely energy efficient and it’s estimated that some 3,300 tonnes of CO2 will be saved and 2,000 tonnes of food will be diverted from landfill each year.
Mr Gemmell, who also owns Woodhouse Farm in Emley, told the Examiner it’s taken five years to get the plant up and running.
He said: “We decided to diversify from rearing livestock.
“The plant is extremely efficient, using a mixture of crops and food waste from various food factories that would otherwise have been sent to landfill.
“The digestate produced as a by-product of the plant is an excellent fertiliser and will be used on our farm as an alternative to artificial fertilisers.
“Farming is all about renewable energy and anything we make here is reused.”
Dewsbury MP Simon Reevell officially opened the plant yesterday.
CO2Sense, the not-for-profit low carbon experts, invested £600,000 into the plant while the rest of the total £1.6m came from bank loans.
CO2Sense director Rick Hamilton said: “Mr Gemmell had this idea and got in touch with us because we are experts in low carbon.
“We helped him with the business plan and introduced him to contacts.
“We were willing to invest the £600,000 because we are very sure that it is going to be a success.
“It’s a pioneering project and I think we will see more and more farms doing things like this in the future.”
Mr Hamilton suggested that in the future local councils could also begin using the technology to produce energy from household waste.
At the moment, some 350,000 tonnes of food waste goes to landfill each year from homes up and down the country.
Anaerobic digestion takes place when bacteria breaks down organic material in the absence of oxygen.
This product combusts to generate electricity and/or heat.
Anaerobic digestion plants need to be large-scale to be cost-effective. And site access is also important for fuel deliveries.
Mr Reevell said: “It’s great that this has come to West Yorkshire and it’s great to see small businesses and the private sector all working together on a green project that people really want to support.
“It’s a much better way of us getting green energy than those huge great big wind turbines that many people oppose.”
