UK Agricultural Policy Post-Brexit Editor: Will Melling Writers: Bence Borbely, Trevor Chow, Tom Nott, Yang Zuo
sold for use in landscape products, such as soil amendments or biodegradable planting pots. Liquid effluents called liquor are a valuable, easily applicable and nutrient-rich fertilizer.90 Anaerobic digestion plants can easily cover the total electricity and heat consumption of diary and livestock farms alongside concentrated animal feeding operations, while largesized biogas plants often sell off excess production to grid, ensuring further profits for the operator.91 Hence, biogas recovery systems can neutralise methane and nitrous oxide emissions from manure, supply the energy-needs of farms and provide high-quality biofertilizer at the same time, making factory farms possibly carbon neutral, or even carbon negative. Nevertheless, anaerobic digestion plants entail especially high start-up costs. Investment for the implementation of necessary infrastructure ranges from £210,000 for small plant producing 25 kWh to £14 million systems pumping out 13,500m3 of gas and 23,000 kWh of electricity every day.92 The payback on investment tends to be between 4-6 years, considerably lower than in the case of solar or windpower. In summary, anaerobic digestion is one of the most environmentally sound and economically viable alternative energy sources, offering high returns in public goods for taxpayers’ money, requiring subsidies due to the high costs of implementation and late returns on investment. Suggestion: •
Providing subsidised, zero-interest and low-interest loans under Tier 2 of the Environmental and Land Management scheme for the implementation of anaerobic digestion plants to mitigate high start-up costs
2.3 Nitrous Oxide (N2O) Nitrous Oxide is the second-most emitted gas in the British agriculture sector, representing 31 per cent of CO2 equivalent GHG production.93 The agricultural sector is responsible for 68 per cent of UK nitrous oxide emissions, therefore it is the primary field of improvement to achieve reduction goals with regard to N2O.94 Nitrous oxide emissions have declined from 19 megatons to 14 megatons since 1990, adding up to a roughly 26 per cent contraction overall.
2.3.1 Soil Emissions
Gabriel Adebayo Malomo, Aliyu Shuaibu Madugu, Stephen Abiodun Bolu, ‘Sustainable Animal Manure Management Strategies and Practices’ [August, 2018] https://www.intechopen.com/books/agricultural-wasteand-residues/sustainable-animal-manure-management-strategies-and-practices 91 National Farmers’ Union, ‘Delivering Britain’s clean energy from the land’ [November 2016] https://www.nfuonline.com/assets/69296 92 IBID 93 Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, 2018 UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Final figures [February 2020 National Statistics] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/862887/2018_ Final_greenhouse_gas_emissions_statistical_release.pdf 94 National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory, Pollutant Information: Nitrous Oxide https://naei.beis.gov.uk/overview/pollutants?pollutant_id=5 90
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