Thames Water Slashes Energy Costs With Poo Power

Poo power, hailed as the latest in energy saving initiatives, must be good news to anyone with an interest in saving the planet. Thames Water, along with anyone else who has had a hand in it, ought to be praised for their efforts. Here we have a ready supply of renewable fuel right under our noses with Thames Water leading the way by saving the company as much as £15 million.

By generating renewable energy through burning dried blocks of “poo cake” in a process called thermal destruction Thames Water promote their greener energy saving approach. The other process it uses for the generation of electricity is anaerobic digestion which is where the methane from sewage sludge is burned. Thames Water says it met 14% of its energy needs by burning sewage or the methane which comes from sewage. Either way it is a winner and must surely be replicated across the country saving valuable energy and reducing the cost to the consumer.

Thames Water as part of its climate change strategy is processing ‘poo cakes’ through its own sewage system but why stop there? Why should Thames Water take all the strain, what about harnessing horse manure? There’s enough of it on the roads where I live to fuel a small power station. Once it was eagerly collected as a garden fertiliser, famously going on the rhubarb, but now its status could be upgraded to a valued form of renewable energy.

We have moved a long way from the 1960s when raw sewage polluted our major rivers; now the rivers are cleaner with the presence of salmon and otters demonstrating this. With effluent free rivers and a newly discovered renewable source of energy it is a relief that the penny appears to have dropped.