How Household Waste Could Be Used To Power UK Homes

Household waste, used cooking oil and woody biomass could be used in the future to provide off-grid homes and businesses with power, a new report from trade association for the LPG industry Liquid Gas UK has suggested.

Converting up to three million tonnes of refuse derived fuel, taken from residual household and similar waste (which is being exported internationally at the moment) could produce approximately 368,000 tonnes of a mixture of bioLPG and low carbon LPG each year, according to the report.

In addition, the 14.6 million tonnes of municipal solid waste that the country sends to landfill every year could also be used as an extra source of bioLPG.

There are 2.5 million homes offgrid at the moment, as well as millions of businesses, around the country. The report also goes on to set out the facilities that would be needed to develop a domestic supply chain, with the country’s existing oil refineries used to provide an effective solution as we move towards renewable fuels.

Liquid Gas UK CEO George Webb said: “Having multiple technologies feeding into the supply chains means that supply will become stronger by not having an over reliance on one key feedstock or a few facilities.

“The report also notes how bioLPG, unlike bioliquids, can be dropped into existing infrastructure, meaning that as the mix of bioLPG to LPG grows with new supply channels coming on stream, consumers can carry on using their existing boiler and tank systems.”

This follows previous research, this time from Policy Connect, suggesting that diverting the 27.5 million tonnes of non-recyclable waste created each year for green heat could support more than half a million homes by 2030, as well as avoiding four million tonnes of CO2 emissions over the next ten years.

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