An insight on renewable energy for farmers and landowners

More than 400 farmers and landowners from across the Midlands, North Wales and North West England have applied to participate in the Renewable Energy Exchange networking event, which is being staged on Thursday 6 February at Chester Racecourse.

This CLA supported event has been designed for farmers looking to develop their own renewable energy and heat projects, attracting payments under the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme and the new Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

The format of this networking event enables each participating landowner to have their own bespoke schedule of pre-arranged appointments with selected technology companies and services firms, in order to evaluate options and short-list potential companies to work with.

In preparation for this pre-arranged meetings service, each participating landowner has submitted a profile detailing the type of renewable project they are looking to develop. These profiles provide an insight into how the FiT and RHI schemes are encouraging farmers to plan renewable energy/heat projects.

Solar PV projects and biomass heat projects are top of the list with 164 and 142 farmers citing an interest respectively, followed by 87 who are interested in having a wind turbine on their land. There are also 58 landowners considering a heat pump installation, 24 interested in a hydro project and 20 looking at the viability of an anaerobic digestion plant.