ADBA co-founds World Biogas Association

The World Biogas Association has been launched to support the growth of biogas and anaerobic digestion technologies.

Founding member, the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association (ADBA), said that the establishment of the new World Biogas Association (WBA) would “help showcase AD’s ability to meet a huge range of global challenges”.

Launched at the United Nations Convention on Climate Change COP22 in Morocco, WBA is dedicated to helping biogas and anaerobic digestion technologies to maximise their contribution to the commitments agreed by 195 national governments at COP21 in December 2015.

Th association invites companies and organisations to join and aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by around 20 per cent, fuel HGVs and other vehicles and reduce and recycle food waste among other targets.

ADBA chief executive Charlotte Morton said: “Biogas is set to become a cheaper energy source than coal, and anaerobic digestion should become one of the leading technologies for mitigating climate change, improving sanitation, ensuring energy and food security and reducing poverty and hunger.

“Demonstrating the international potential of our technology helps us make the case for national support. The UK could be a global leader in what could become a £1 trillion biogas industry, exporting expertise and equipment worth billions of pounds and creating tens of thousands of jobs.”

At the launch in Morocco, president of WBA David Newman said: “I am delighted to see this global perspective from the biogas industry. The potential to provide energy security by transforming the millions of tonnes of organic wastes which today are largely unused, is a huge potential indeed.”

The anaerobic digestion industry recently hit back at government plans to scrap the Feed-in-Tariff subsidy for large scale anaerobic digestion installations and cutting it for smaller projects, rejecting the proposal that many are now economically viable without the subsidy.