ENERGY from organic waste can help support the UK's post-Covid Green recovery – that will be the key message from the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association's 2021 National Conference, being held online on February 16 and 17.

Lengthily entitled 'Green gas: ready to go, ready to scale, ready to deliver Net Zero', the conference will address how AD can reduce the carbon footprint of the hard-to-decarbonise sectors of transport, heat and agriculture, as well as look at the financial frameworks needed to make that happen.

"The 2020s are the decisive decade of decarbonisation and AD is ready to deliver today," said ADBA chief executive Charlotte Morton. "The UK generates millions of tonnes of organic wastes – sewage, manures, slurries and other agricultural wastes, food and food and drink processing wastes – most of which goes to landfill.

"70% of all wastes worldwide are dumped in the open atmosphere, resulting in serious GHG and public health issues," she said. "AD can play a key role in processing these wastes safely, capturing the resultant methane, and recycling them into useful green products. The technology is mature, proven, ready to go, ready to scale, ready to deliver Net Zero."

As the UK prepares to host the COP26 meeting in Glasgow in November, putting measures in place to meet the UK’s fifth carbon budget for 2030 and its net zero target by 2050 has become more urgent than ever, said ABDA. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting that 2030 would be the 'tipping point' for climate change, time was of the essence and ensuring that AD and biogas are integrated into national strategies to deliver on the Paris Agreement and beyond was a key priority for the industry.

The ADBA National Conference will explore how best to frame the sector's arguments to take to the policymakers at the Glasgow event.