A study conducted by Gail Taylor, a professor of plant biology at University of Southampton and UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) researcher, shows that planting energy crops such as short rotation coppice on vacant agricultural land in England can help to produce sufficient biomass for meeting the renewable energy objectives.
UKERC has provided funding for this research project, which is aimed at the use of unused land in an efficient way to enable production of enough biomass for meeting around 4% of the electricity demand in the UK.
Coppiced willow trees being grown in England as an energy crop.
Bioenergy plays a significant part in UK’s commitment towards meeting the 30 % demand of electricity and 15 % of all energy by 2020. Currently, the energy crops are able to produce only about 0.1 % of electricity.
The UKERC study suggests that the biofuels can be produced from coppice crops (lignocellulosic crops) using the new technology. Researchers created settings based on four conditions to analyze UK’s biomass supply from lignocellulosic crops. The conditions, on which crops need to be grown, are profit return, impact on ecosystem and food production without disrupting alternative land uses.
The recent study by the Taylor-led UKERC team will determine the influence of future climate situations on biomass supply.
A study has been performed on 46 land designations using spatially referenced agricultural land classification (ACL) grades, which are based on various factors, such as soil, climate and site, and Geographic Information Software (GIS).
The results from UKERC research shows that more than 39 % of the land cannot be used for planting short rotation bioenergy crops because of legislative and agronomic limitations. However, marginal land is found in England, which will produce biomass of 7.5 million tons capacity. This amount will be sufficient to generate nearly 1 % of energy in the UK.