Cogen(t)

Two issues making the news today - the future of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and how to meet our future energy needs - need to be considered alongside each other rather than in isolation. How can European farmers survive the dismantling of protectionist tariffs? By instead being rewarded for growing carbon neutal energy crops (grasses, trees) that can be burned as fuel in biomass boilers. Encouraging the widespread installation of combined heat and power (cogen) schemes for businesses and householders should be a matter of urgency, not just in Europe, but worldwide. By turning Western farmers into the providers of our future energy needs, while their counterparts in developing nations are allowed access to our markets for their crops is one increasingly attractive way to kill two birds with one stone. Let us hope our policymakers have the nous to see that.