CLA lobbying succeeds as new renewable technology moves a step forward today

The Government’s renewables policy moved a step forward today as the new "banded" Renewables Obligation (RO) came into force – after a successful lobbying campaign by the CLA.

The "banding"* means that newer, higher-cost technologies such as biogas generation would attract more financial support than lower cost, established technologies such as wind power.

CLA President Henry Aubrey-Fletcher said: "This is a tremendous success for CLA lobbying. In 2004 the CLA was the only organisation in the UK to call on the Government to band the Renewables Obligation. We set out our arguments in depth in our 2005 paper "More Than Wind"**.

"It took another four years of hard work to deliver it, but hard pressed rural communities now genuinely have a choice in renewables. Wind and landfill gas are no longer the only option."

The CLA President added: "Other forms of renewables from biomass, small scale hydro-electric power and in particular biogas, are now supported properly. We argued they would provide key environmental security of supply benefits.

"To help realise the potential, the CLA has recently published two essential how-to handbooks on biomass energy and biogas energy as an enterprise."