The owner of the electricity company Ecotricity, Dale Vince has claimed that there is enough grass in the UK to power every British home through renewable biofuel. “Theoretically there’s enough non-food producing farmland in Britain to meet 95 per cent of Britain’s domestic and commercial needs.” Though the repurposing of the entirety of the UK’s grassland would require extreme co-ordination and large-scale investment, Ecotricity is beginning projects to make use of the UK’s grass.

While much of the renewable energy industry (Ecotricity included) has focused on wind and solar farms to source its energy, Ecotricity’s plan to build a green gasmill, which produces energy by harvesting, processing, and converting grass. This project is based at Sparsholt College in Hampshire and is set to be the UK’s first grass-powered green gasmill. Upon completion, it is predicted to power over 4,000 UK homes and save 2,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

Concerns remain about the logistics of such a project. Plans were only recently approved in July 2018, and the installation costs of the anaerobic digesters that Ecotricity plans to use tend to require significant financing. The amount of land required to harvest the grass is also large, creating another overhead cost for the company.

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