Gas made from Cumbrian cheese is set to heat hundreds of homes as a £10m plant rolls into production.
The Lake District Biogas plant will heat hundreds of local homes using residues from First Milk’s Aspatria creamery site.
The government backed plant will feed bio-methane to the gas grid, generated just from digesting its cheese making residues.
Wash waters and whey permeate (creamery residue after protein extraction for use in energy supplements) are pumped to the plant plant from the creamery.
This is then turned into gas and used to generate electricity on-site.
Clearfleau, the company that built the new plant, says that about 60 per cent of the gas produced is expected to be taken back out of the grid for the creamery’s own use in steam-making, leaving the equivalent of 1,600 homes’ annual gas usage circulating to local homes and businesses.
Gordon Archer, Chairman of Lake District Biogas says: “Completion of this £10 million project on time, given the weather conditions in Cumbria this winter, has been a major achievement for the project team and Clearfleau.
"This is the largest AD plant on a dairy processing site in Europe dedicated to handling the residual materials from the cheese making process and we look forward to working with Clearfleau on future projects."
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