What we're going to do

Moving forwards, we'll be completing projects at our facilities that use existing renewable energy technologies.  We'll be investigating more efficient ways of energy generation from new and emerging technologies.  Some of the things we'll be doing are detailed below.

Sewage gas CHP

We'll be looking at increasing the number of CHP units we have installed.  As well as refining the technology to increase their efficiency, we hope to optimise the gas yield of the digestion process which will allow us to generate more energy from the same amount of sewage.

Energy from sludge

New technologies, such as gasification and pyrollysis, are being developed to extract any remaining energy from digested sludge.  These technologies will minimise the amount of waste that is left at the end of the process.

Energy crops

The growing and harvesting of energy crops, combined with digestion and gas generation, is a technology that has been extensively used in Germany. We plan to introduce this process by utilising crops grown on land where our digested sludge is applied.

hydro

We currently produce 3% of our self generated electricity from water. Harnessing reservoirs, gravitational water distribution networks and even sewage treatment works outfalls will increase our energy production from hydro power.

Large wind turbines

We have identified a number of our sites that are suitable for harnessing wind power and there is the potential to develop an installed base of 40MW. We aim to collate wind speed data and begin public consultation starting in April 2008.