Last chance to have a say on Blunsdon renewable gas plant
A public consultation closes tonight (1st May)
People in Blunsdon and Highworth have until the end of today (Thursday 1st May) - to make their views known on plans to build a ground breaking new energy plant in the area.
Rivan Industries want to build a synthetic fuel factory on a greenfield site just north of Swindon.
The renewable energy's considered a potential alternative to electric vehicles.
More than 150 people went along to public consultation events in the last week.
The company’s head of planning Annabel MacGregor said about the events: “People are interested in how it all works, but they are also concerned about traffic on the road and why we want to put it on a green field in the country.
“To be honest we’d love to be on an industrial estate next to a carbon-dioxide producer, because that’s something we need for the process, but we are a new company and we don’t have a huge choice about who will lease us a site.
“We want to show people that we are taking their concerns seriously – we will have a construction traffic management plan in place, and we will manage that on the lane.
“And after a short construction period of six months, it’s all self-contained. All it will need is visits from engineers in one car.”
Councillor Ken Saunders, a member of Highworth Town Council said: “I’d like to see the details of all the plans in the full application, especially the environmental impact assessment – although the field it will be sited on looks like is a single crop or grazing.
“I think it sounds like a good idea if they can make it work – the push for all-electric sounds nice, but I don’t think it works, you need a fallback. If this can be done at scale. It could be very good.”
A full planning application is expected to be submitted in June.
The groundbreaking technology would see limestone heated to release carbon dioxide - with hydrogen separated from oxygen from the water collected on the site in a separate process.
Processing the carbon dioxide and hydrogen together produces methane gas, which Rivan says can be pumped straight into the national gas grid.
The company says the Blunsdon site, if approved, would be the first useable demonstration of the technology which it believes can save millions of tonnes of carbon emissions from using fossil fuel gas.