Anaerobic Anarchy

Times of TW.

 Rural Protest Power

By Kent Barker

The woman was almost in tears as she described the night-time silence around her home. “The only thing you can hear is barn owls,” she told the meeting.

            The village hall was packed. I hadn’t seen so many there since the Christmas panto.  And there was some of the same sense of unreality.  To start with signs had gone up on verges all around the village advertising a meeting to discuss “The Benenden Power Plant”.  Power plant? What, fueled from the closed Kentish coalmines? Or from a Russian gas pipeline running through the Channel Tunnel?  Or perhaps there were plans to rebuild the nearby Dungeness Nuclear generator on the village green?

            No, in fact this was about a planning application for a local farmer to install a 500kw anaerobic digester on his land down a narrow lane a mile or so from the village centre.

            Now a short explanation: anaerobic digesters are like alchemy but instead of turning lead into gold, they do something much more valuable.  Putting it bluntly they turn cow shit into electricity.  There is a sunken tank about the size of an Olympic swimming pool with a concrete top and sides. In one end you shovel the s…. sorry, cow dung and slurry, and out the other end some time later you get an inert digestate which makes wonderful natural fertiliser.

            What has happened in the meantime is that, in the absence of oxygen, micro-organisms have broken down the biodegradable material and given off two useful by-products: gas and heat.  The methane-rich gas is used to fuel a CHP – combined heat and power generator, while the heat can be used for homes, or to dry the digestate to make transportable fertiliser or bedding for cattle.

            AD plants can use a variety of inputs including food waste or crops.  Our proposed plant was going to take straw and maze and beet as well as the slurry.  Oh yes, and some chicken manure from a local producer.

            A head of steam had been building among opponents prior to the meeting. Entrenched positions were being taken. Email lists had been drawn up. Anonymous leaflets full of misinformation had been circulated. A Facebook page had been opened – complete with a photograph of an elderly couple who actually supported the idea.  Several vocal objectors had already attended the Parish Planning Committee meeting – which unanimously approved the proposal.  But the objectors were really holding their fire until they could have a go at the applicant, the farmer who happens also to Chair the Parish Council.

The main concern was traffic movements. Where would the source material for the AD come from?  The answer was the farm itself.  Nothing additional was to be brought in from outside.  But some people simply didn’t believe the answers they were given and certainly not that it could actually reduce traffic movements along the narrow lanes. 

Then there was the smell.  Now muck spreading and chicken manure give off awful stenches sometimes for days on end.  This would be eliminated as the digestate is odourless.  But people remained sceptical.  As they did over the question of noise.  The generators and compressors are in sound-proof enclosures.  If I recall correctly, at around 80 meters away the noise would be 27 decibels. Well that’s just louder than a whisper and less that the ambient noise in a quiet rural area.  Certainly less than the 40 decibels of ordinary bird calls - let alone barn owls!  But again the figures were frankly disbelieved.

More distasteful still was the querying of how much ‘profit’ the farmer would make from the plant.  Had anyone asked the questioner about his income or investments they’d likely have got short shrift. In fact the £2 million investment would have a pay-back period of around seven years.

Next to no one at the meeting tried to outline the macro environmental benefits of AD: a reduction in use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions, an increase in renewable energy use; reduction in biomass wastes that would otherwise go to landfill.

But there’s another factor.  The protestors at the meeting, perhaps understandably, fear anything that might alter the local environment. It’s why they’ve chosen to live in rural remoteness.  But the problem is that the very countryside that they are so vociferous about protecting is created by farming. So it seems to me myopic to object to anything that might make farms more sustainable.  I have my issues with farmers – mainly over pesticides and hunting - but I recognise it’s a tough business and it’s depressing to see people getting so aggressively personal when Farmers do try to do something good!

Oh, and by the way, the power from the plant would be more than enough to supply every ungrateful home in the village!