Deal Farm Biogas Ltd has submitted a new planning application (part retrospective) to South Norfolk Council [2021/2788] to validate changes to the planning permission secured in 2015 and to further enhance sustainability elements of the project.
An AD plant at Deal Farm has been in the pipeline for several years, with the first planning permission for an AD facility at the site secured in 2013. Since the original approved application, the scheme has been successfully amended three times through the planning process in line with latest technology developments and changes to government policy.
The delivery of the AD plant at Deal Farm, located near Diss in South Norfolk, will generate enough biogas (biomethane) to power more than 4,600 homes with 100% renewable gas produced at the facility. The gas will be injected directly into the local gas grid network to be utilised by households in Roydon and Diss. Biogas is not the only output of the facility, however, as another of the by-products the AD process generates is a material called digestate; essentially a high-quality, sustainable fertiliser containing essential plant nutrients and organic fibres that also helps to retain moisture in the soils, improve structure, and protect against soil erosion.
Fundamentally, the AD plant being delivered at Deal Farm will significantly benefit local farmers, who will be able to safely store and dispose of their farm by-products at the Deal Farm site, to be transformed into renewable biogas and organic fertiliser. Ordinarily, farmers would have to pay to have these materials transported across the country to be handled, therefore creating cost, time and environmental implications. As such, not only will delivering the AD plant at Deal Farm minimise these implications for local farmers, but they will further benefit from the digestate produced at the site, which will be pumped to remote ‘offtake points’ for farmers to utilise on soil and crops on their own farms.
Deal Farm Biogas Ltd has now submitted a Section 73a planning application to South Norfolk Council, after it was realised that several changes to the most recently approved planning application in 2015 were needed once construction at the site restarted earlier this year. The changes predominantly include amendments to the layout and positioning of equipment on the site, but critically, the application seeks to further enhance the sustainability of the plant by including carbon capture technology, which will enable the AD plant to capture and liquify 7,000 tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent to removing approximately 20,000,000 car road miles from UK roads each year.
In order to appropriately respond to the concerns of local residents, the S73a application is being submitted alongside a range of technical reports available for public viewing, including reports on the transport, ecology, landscape, noise, air quality, flood risk, drainage, feedstock and digestate management of the plant.
The full scope of changes that are being proposed as part of the S73a application are:
- A water lagoon to the north west of the site to improve water management
- A rectangular containment area for containing any potential spills from the digester
- Pasteurisation for the digestate to ensure it is weed seed free and suitable for local farmers to use
- Further details on the technical equipment for gas upgrades and the planned connection to the national gas grid
- A building for storing excess farmyard manure in the event that it cannot be fed during the daily feed
- Swapping over of the tanks and clamps – as the original location for the tanks was not suitable for construction
A study of vehicle movements associated with Deal Farm farming operations over the last 5 years has also been carried out as part of the new application submission in response to concerns over increased traffic movements associated with the AD plant. This study has concluded that there have been on average 4,284 movements per annum associated with crop and farm-waste management that would be processed through the AD plant. By comparison, the projected vehicle movements when the AD plant is operational is on average 3,439 movements per annum. These vehicles will be similar in terms of size and mass (i.e., standard agricultural transport vehicles). The reduction in vehicle movements is associated with the:
- Avoidance of double handling when transporting crops off the farm to markets outside the local area
- Avoidance of off-site pig manure movements and double handling
- Transferring liquid digestate via pipeline to lagoons for primarily direct application to land
- Avoidance of the use of chemical fertilisers
In response to the concerns by the local community, Deal Farm Biogas Ltd has prepared a project website which seeks to demonstrate the importance of delivering the AD plant at Deal Farm and explain how the AD process works, the planning history for the project to date, as well as providing a feedback and communication form to allow residents to directly speak to a member of the project team.
