What impact will the move to biofuels have on the water industry - is it a threat or opportunity ?
Answered by By David Eddy, Manager of MWH's Global Water Knowledge Centre (WKC):
The impacts of major new investment and development of biofuel production in the UK will have an impact
on various areas of the water industry. These will range from the possible additional irrigation water
demand, through water demand in the processing and production of the fuels through to the conversion of
existing generation plant and the supply of new power generation plant for the burning of biofuels.
Biofuels offer the advantage of course that they are claimed to be carbon neutral in their production.
In other words the carbon absorbed by the plants in their growing approximately balance with the carbon
released in their production through esterification, fertilizer production and oil extraction. However
the burning of the fuels will continue to contribute to the accumulation of green house gases, albeit
with lower emission of CO2. For every MJ of biodeisel 0.025kg of CO2 is released. This compares with
0.087kg for fossil fuels. This carbon balance relies though on the assumption that the land used for
energy crops will have previously been set aside, or is part of the current surplus grain crop production
from the UK.
Further stretching of water resources
The biofuel feed stocks typically used in the UK include oil seed rape, sugar beet and cereal crops.
These crops are fairly drought tolerant, but to provide high yield crops they will pull an additional
demand on aquifers if we are to achieve anything like the biofuel production that Government is looking
for industry to develop.
Possible competition to major utilities and opportunity to exploit effluent reuse
The biodeisel plants themselves will also be big new users of water, albeit that water usage in the
production stage has reduced significantly. Much of that water will need to be high purity water.
This can though create opportuities for new entrants and more competition to the water market.
Companies could start to look to the potential say of taking sewage effluent, treating it and offering
it as high purity effluent reuse waters to these major users. These high purity sewage effluents
will be non- regulated which cold provide opportunities for new entrants and competition to the water
utilities market.
Conversion of utilities emergency power generation plants to run on biofuels
We have seen in the press recently how Thames Water have committed to operating their proposed new
Beckton desalination plant using 100% biodeisel. Water Companies could look to convert and build new
emergency generators to run with biofuels, selling surplus energy back to the grid at the more attractive green tariff.
