Confidence among farmers and other potential investors in renewable energy will only be re-built by consistent Government targets and sustained incentives, NFU President Peter Kendall said today.
Speaking at the National Association of Agricultural Contractors’ "Contractor 2011" conference at Peterborough, Mr Kendall said that the fact that the Government had twice moved the goalposts over feed-in tariffs for solar photo-voltaics had destroyed trust and was a threat to investment in the sector. A system of pre-registration was needed to restore confidence.
And he was also fiercely critical of this week’s recommendations from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), branding them "half-hearted and disappointing".
"We will never secure the investment that we need in renewables without commitment from Government and confidence among investors", he said.
"At the moment, we have neither. The solar PV debacle has destroyed trust in that sector, and now the Committee on Climate Change appears to be set on repeating the mistake with its half-hearted and badly thought through recommendations on bioenergy and biofuels.
"The USA and Brazil have shown how a clear mandate and policy up front provides for a stable market, encourages significant productivity improvements of feedstocks, develops efficient supply chains, allows companies to invest and continue to improve and is now not only supplying clean fuels but also allowing investment and development of projects like carbon capture and second generation biofuels. We are already a long way behind, and the CCC’s recommendations will do nothing to change that.
"A mandate to encourage production will ensure crops are grown and the infrastructure provided; the technology neutral policy, certificate trading scheme and buyout provide the flexibility to ensure we do not get there at all costs. And if it turns out that the crops are needed more for food than for fuel, then the market should be allowed to dictate that that is where they go.
"But without clear mandates and confidence, the crops may well not be grown in the first place."
Given the right commitment and incentives from Government, Mr Kendall was enthusiastic about the prospects for land-based renewables, suggesting that they could be contributing between 5 and 10 per cent of the UK’s renewables targets by the end of the decade. The main contributors would be biogas from on-farm anaerobic digesters, solar PV, biomass power stations, bio-ethanol from wheat and bio-diesel from oilseed rape.
"Demand for renewable energy is here to stay", he predicted. "That isn’t just down to the imperatives of climate change. The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima and the political volatility in the Middle-East, mean that energy security is up there with food security as a strategic aim of Government, and our land is bound to have a central role to play in providing that security."
And he argued that farmers could make a major contribution to meeting the demand for clean energy, without prejudicing supplies of crops for food or animal feed, by applying the principles of sustainable intensification, provided that targets were realistic and did not distort the signals being sent to farmers by the market.
"Bioenergy supports farm profitability and will help drive investment in food production. There is nothing like making a profit for generating investment, lifting yields and increasing crop areas. In the US, they are still exporting maize, even though a third of the maize crop is being used for bio-ethanol."
