YOUR COMMUNITY HUB BIOGAS COMMUNITY

“YOUR COMMUNITY HUB” BIOGAS COMMUNITY

Location: Cleethorpes
Primrose Way, Cleethorpes DN35 0SN, UK
Latitude: 53.536961 | Longitude: -0.033262

Description: “Your Community Hub” is a registered SOCIAL ENTERPRISE company and is currently represented as two community groups located in the sea port of Grimsby and adjoining Cleethorpes in NE Lincolnshire at the mouth of the Humber Estuary. The members of the settlements constitute a local community in Grant Thorold in the East Marsh area of the town and another at Humberston, Cleethorpes which are serviced by community centres equipped with libraries, cafes, business units to support community cohesion and activities. They now aspire to become a model for renewable energy through the use of AD

Members:

• Grant Thorold, Grimsby

• Cleethorpes

Main actions so far:

• The UK ISABEL team through its contact with N E Lincs Council was introduced to its creator and community champion who first provided us with an AD feasibility study (attached) for our initial observations.
  • From the onset we considered how the partnership between the farmer growing maize and having chicken litter available and the YCH community that was envisaged for financing the scheme might develop.
  • We will also consider some options through established contact with a company which has developed a community share scheme for a digester using chicken litter and which is up and running.
  • We also observed that the quantity of maize feedstock in the business plan (well above the 50% limitation for biogas production) may limit access to any feed in tariff (FIT’s) and we will advise on any ratio of energy crops to waste in relation to this point if private use of heat output is not secured.
  • Given problems encountered by other projects which did not go ahead because they were not able to contract enough material to ensure the finance for the project we will be considering contact with local fish and bakery businesses for this purpose.

• The envisaged use of poultry manure and energy crops may produce a digestate that is easier to use for growing projects than when food waste is used as feed stock.
  • YCH is considering working with Green Futures which is based in Bradley about 3 miles out of Grimsby on a 3.5 acre landscape.
  • This organisation grows its own plants, fruit and veg and function via a committed group of staff, volunteers & people on work placements which enables the growing of produce on a reasonably large scale. Produce can be purchased from site or delivered via a Veg Box Scheme and it provides support to local volunteers which includes people who are retired, unemployed, carers, people with learning disabilities, health issues etc. as being physically and socially active and working outdoors can have a very positive impact upon a person’s health and well-being. The Green Futures landscape has a pond, woodland, 4 poly-tunnels and a training room all of which can be hired by community groups and local businesses.
• YCH has 10,500 community members and is very active in social enterprise and indeed has won national awards. It is looking at raising a minimum of £0.5 million investment to set up a unit and is no stranger to successfully managing such scale of enterprise. This is an important scheme to support because of the size and commitment of YCH and the potential to influence other schemes in the region.

Next steps:

• We now have a meeting scheduled for which an agenda for next steps has been formulated