Although the commissioning deadline for the Green Gas Support Scheme (GGSS) has been extended to 2030, this ‘extension’ comes with a hidden cost: a reduced tariff lifetime. Any plant commissioned after March 2028 will see its 15-year support window clipped, effectively ending by March 2043 regardless of when it comes online.
This creates a high-stakes gamble for developers, who are being asked to build complex infrastructure under a sunset clause that actively erodes the financial viability of their projects the longer they take to build. It is not the long-term certainty the sector needs; it is a ticking clock.
And, perhaps this wouldn’t be such an urgent issue if the government hadn’t recently introduced the Simpler Recycling mandate, injecting 9.5 – 10 million tonnes of food waste into the collection pipeline, without a clear plan of exactly what to do with it on the other side but, alas, here we are.
Realistically, and something we’ve discussed extensively in the recent past, the UK needs between 150 and 200 new anaerobic digestion plants to process the 10 million tonnes of food waste being collected but, without a clear show of long term support going forward, the GGSS operation budget has been filled for the foreseeable future, creating a stop-start investment environment where developers are essentially locked out of support despite the scheme’s theoretical extension.
The Current Bottleneck
Ultimately, the ‘subsidy cliff’ mentioned above is driving a frantic, unsustainable rush in the sector. Developers are being forced to submit applications for projects that are especially underdeveloped – or even not fully designed – simply because they are trying to beat the March 2028 threshold to secure the full 15-year support window.
They know that every month of delay beyond that date erodes the financial viability of their investment, effectively punishing them for the long lead times inherent in complex infrastructure development.
With this, investors are understandably cautious – unwilling to shoulder the risk that comes from the lack of long term support certainty.
So, what we’re seeing is the following domino effect:
- Developers rushing to secure Green Gas Support for AD plants that aren’t anywhere near ready and therefore perhaps will never reach viability and could easily fall away
- These underdeveloped projects are soaking up the slots of plants that are much further along in their development but can’t access the support they need
- And finally, without viable projects or long term support and security, investors are reluctant to invest in new plants which ultimately will lead to a vast number of viable projects being abandoned through lack of:
- Support
- Funding
A Lack of Infrastructure
This, not to mention a rising reliance on the very ‘waste management’ process we’re desperately trying to get away from: landfill.
Without a clear plan of action established, 9.5 – 10 million tonnes of food waste will inevitably end up in landfill because, what else are we supposed to do with it!?
Sector professionals and organisational leaders such as ABDA and Grant Keenan of Keenan Recycling have highlighted that the policy mandates (like Simpler Recycling) are creating an immediate surge in waste volumes without a corresponding surge in processing capacity.
The mandate is forcing compliance, but the infrastructure to support it is being throttled by regulatory hurdles and funding uncertainty.
With the introduction of the Simpler Recycling mandate, the government aims to divert the 7 million tonnes of food waste that historically ended up in landfill to more sustainable waste management processes.
However, without a corresponding and aggressive investment in processing infrastructure, this mandate risks becoming a hollow policy as we are effectively forcing the transition of millions of tonnes of waste from general bins to food caddies, only to face a critical shortage of the anaerobic digestion capacity required to process it. Instead of solving the landfill problem, we are simply moving the bottleneck and delaying the inevitable.
The Grid Crisis And Impossible Connections
But, in all honesty, even if we did successfully build the infrastructure needed to process the 10 million tonnes of food waste being generated – those 150-200 AD plants – we still have an irrefutable issue on our hands: the instability of the grid.
The reality is that the National Grid is in crisis and is in desperate and urgent need of upgrading and maintenance; billions of pounds worth, as we can hardly process the energy we currently have flowing through it, where new renewable projects are being given connection dates many years into the future to curb overwhelm.
Developers are currently caught in a system where connection dates are routinely pushed into 2030 or beyond, often due to an overwhelmed transmission network and a lack of physical capacity.
We are essentially trying to build a modern, decentralised energy system on an aging, centralised grid that is already operating at its breaking point.
For AD, this means that even ‘shovel-ready’ projects are being stalled, not for a lack of ambition, but because the grid simply isn’t ready to take the power we’ve spent years working to produce.
Beyond The AD Sector
But, the issues are much wider reaching than simply the AD sector.
Plastics Recycling: The lack of long-term certainty – coupled with volatile market prices – has led to a 22% decline in UK plastics recycling capacity between 2023 and 2025, where AD developers are opting to retrofit existing plants rather than commit to new-builds, which are essential for handling the millions of tonnes of new food waste arriving in the system.
Agriculture: What’s more, all of this has an impact on the agricultural sector as, by failing to support anaerobic digestion plants, the government is essentially ‘choking off’ a cheap and affordable and natural nutrient rich fertiliser from farmers and their farms, forcing farmers to spend out a large amount of money on fossil fuel intensive synthetic and expensive fertilisers, which are vulnerable to global price shocks, as seen in recent months.
Logistics & Transportation: as current AD plants become overwhelmed with feedstock to process, the vehicles that transport said waste from plant to plant will need to cover increasing road miles in order to find a plant with processing capacity, leading to increased congestion, confusion and frustration, not to mention an increase in fuel use and emissions.
Local Authorities and Taxes: The government’s ‘Simpler Recycling’ mandate has placed local authorities in an impossible position: a statutory ‘regulatory vice.’ By legally requiring councils to collect food waste without ensuring sufficient processing infrastructure, the government has inadvertently triggered a capacity crisis. With supply drastically outstripping demand, gate fees at the few operational AD plants have spiked, leaving councils with no leverage and no choice but to pay premium prices to fulfill their legal duties. Ultimately, this ‘infrastructure debt’ is passed directly to the taxpayer. Between the soaring costs of waste disposal contracts and the additional burden of transporting organic material to distant facilities, residents are effectively footing the bill for the government’s failure to plan for the end-to-end journey of the waste they have mandated us to collect.
So, although this may seem like a niche sector issue or a small government oversight in policy and regulation, the lack of GGSS succession, coupled with the Simpler Recycling reform, could have a much further reaching and devastating impact on multiple industries and sectors than simply AD, not to mention serving only to delay pushing 10 million tonnes of food waste back into landfill – the very place the food recycling reform is actively trying to move waste away from.
The Increasing Importance of AD
The introduction of the Simpler Recycling reform, coupled with the end of the Green Gas Support Scheme in just 4 years – despite a couple of much needed extensions – shows both a severe lack of planning from our MPs, as well as a lack of respect for a sector that has fast become crucial to the UK’s overall energy security; providing baseload renewable energy that’s ‘always on’ and in no way weather dependent.
In fact, UK-based anaerobic digestion plants currently generate around 7TWh of energy, enough to provide electricity to approximately 2 million homes; fulfilling 7% of the UK’s domestic electricity demand.
However, sector research suggests that, with the right policy framework and infrastructure in place, the UK has the technical potential to actually reach 120TWh annually by 2050, which could meet the nation’s entire electricity demand and then some, where 120TWh could comfortably power in excess of 30 million homes.
Imagine that; AD has the very real potential to fulfill the UK’s entire domestic electricity demand by 2050. Yes, you read that correctly. AD alone has the potential to meet the entire of the UK’s domestic electric demand whilst safely and meaningfully processing millions of tonnes of food waste, diverting it away from landfill and preventing it from wasting away on a pile of rotting rubbish and emitting methane into the atmosphere.
And possibly the most frustrating part is that DESNZ publicly supports anaerobic digestion and acknowledges its importance, whilst simultaneously failing to announce a successor to GGSS – the very scheme providing the financial security and certainty the AD sector needs to flourish.
If the government truly wants to achieve a circular economy, it must stop treating biogas infrastructure as an afterthought. We don’t need more mandates; we need the courage to build the capacity that turns a policy ambition into a national reality.
