An idea that will be tested soon in the UK is making gas from grass (called biomethane). Some biomethane is currently produced from farmyard manure but it is only a small amount. Gas from grass works by rotting down grass in a big tank with no air present to give methane gas. This will be added to the UK gas grid meaning less fossil gas is required.
The grass needs to be farmed and cut and transported and the companies involved need to take care that the emissions from doing all the work to make the gas are much less than for extracting and burning natural gas. The latest estimates suggest that gas produced this way could save between a third to a half of emissions from natural gas. If this could be scaled up rapidly then it could help reduce the UK’s carbon footprint a little in the next two decades. As with bioplastics, we don’t want to put pressure on land for food production (and deforestation if it causes more food imports). This means we will need to plan it carefully and there may be a limit for how much we can produce this way.
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