Sewage gas to power World Wildlife Fund’s UK office

The UK branch of the World Wildlife Fund has decided to practice what it preaches and has signed a deal with the Renewable Energy Company (REC) to power its head office with locally-generated renewable energy.


REC sells its ‘ecotricity’ brand of renewable energy to businesses that want to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. “With ecotricity, if the customer prefers one type of generating technology over some others, then we try to customise,” Clare Summers of REC told edie.

In WWF’s case, locally-generated renewable energy sources included sewage gas and energy from waste. WWF chose sewage gas and the organisation forecasts that it will reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 500 tonnes a year.

An added benefit is REC’s policy of charging market prices for ecotricity, instead of a premium.

The conventional, fossil fuel-based electricity industry is responsible for about one-third of the UK’s CO2 emissions, emissions which contribute significantly to climate change.

Energy from waste incineration was WWF’s other renewable option. Some environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, have criticised the Government’s decision to include energy from waste incineration as a renewable energy because the mixed feedstock that is burned includes such polluting materials as plastics and metals, and the resulting CO2 emissions are almost as high as conventional, fossil fuel-based energy sources (see related story).

REC also sells renewable energy to The Co-op Bank (see related story) and Thames Water.

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