Scottish growers looking for diversification opportunities could be set for a boost with the news that ScottishPower is on the look out for farmers to grow biofuels.
The energy giant stated that it is looking to contract Scottish farmers to produce 250,000 tonnes of energy crops, to be burned at Scotland’s two coal fired power stations at Cockenzie and Longannet. It is planned that the energy crops will displace coal burned at the stations.
The initiative looks to use around 12 percent of Scotland’s total agricultural land, which equates to approximately 35,000 acres, with five percent of the firm’s coal requirement displaced by energy crops by 2013.
ScottishPower suggested that a range of crop types would be suitable, from cereals to short rotational crops such as willow coppice.
The company’s generation director, Frank Mitchell, said: “This is a significant step in our renewable energy programme ultimately displacing 300,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. However, it is also an excellent opportunity for farmers with ScottishPower offering support for the Scottish agricultural community”.
However the proposals have met with heavy criticism from the Scottish branch of the Soil Association, which said that to use 12 percent of Scotland’s total agricultural land for anything other than producing food ‘is a change of truly vast proportions - one that in all probability will have enormous repercussions. To do it in the name of sustainable energy is extraordinarily muddle-headed.’
The charity’s Scottish director, Hugh Raven, also suggested that biomass is an ‘incredibly inefficient way of generating electricity’, that would not help in the fight against climate change.
“Scotland produces far too little of many crops - vegetables and fruit, for example - already. To reduce the land available for them is moving in precisely the wrong direction,” he insisted.
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