LAWR

UK AD & BIOGAS PREVIEW As chief executive of the Anaerobic Digestion & Biogas Association (ADBA), Charlotte Morton is at the heart of a team pushing the organisation's plan to help remove the barriers to growth currently faced by the industry and to promote the benefits of AD. She speaks to Liz Gyekye about ADBA's challenges and de-carbonising farming. Charlotte Morton is a woman on a mission. Morton, a former lawyer, has been chief executive of ADBA since the organisation's inception in 2009 and has seen huge growth in the anaerobic digestion (AD) industry over the past few years. Since featuring prominently in the Government's vision for the future of waste treatment, as set out in Defra's Waste Strategy 2007, AD has proved something of a rising star among waste treatment processes. Consequently, a wide range of organisations - from farm sites to food processors – have set up systems to treat local organic wastes and take advantage of the resulting renewable energy by powering their own equipment or selling it back to the national grid. According to data provided by WRAP there were 32 AD plants in the UK in 2009. Currently, there are around 130 operational sites and 340 AD sites under development. "The industry grew about 39% last year. Most of my time was spent trying to promote the value of the industry and recognition of its potential," Morton says. "We were constantly talking about the industry having the potential to do 'x, y and z' but now we are actually delivering. We are delivering renewable energy." Based on likely waste feedstock resources, AD could deliver between 3–5 Terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity by 2020, according to figures from DECC. In fact, Morton would like to see around 2,000 to 3,000 AD plants in the UK in the next five to ten years. However, the AD industry was not Morton's first career plan. Originally a lawyer she later founded WhizzGo, the pay-by-the-hour car hire business which soon became the UK's largest national car club. The move to AD was, in actual fact, an accident. She happened upon AD when she met a university friend who was married to the former ADBA chairman Lord Redesdale. He needed help setting up the trade body and Morton offered to help with legal agreements. She says that AD "completely fits with things I care about" and she was "happy to have landed up in it by accident". She says that growing up in Hampshire she had always cared about the environment: "I've always felt that we have to look after nature. We always try to dominate nature but we should try not to – we should work with it." Morton says she is passionate about the environment and sees the drive to work towards a circular economy as a fascinating challenge. "What drives behaviour today has to change radically and market forces will not deliver that," she explains. 26 Local Authority Waste & Recycling June 2014 Talking about AD until the cows come home ADBA shapes Government policy through working groups regularly attended by government agencies, such as the EA, WRAP and the HSE. ADBA was established in 2009 as a not-for-profit organisation representing businesses in the AD sector to help remove the barriers to growth currently faced by the industry and to promote the benefits of AD to the UK. What ADBA does?

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