MANILA, PHILIPPINES [TAC] – A new, commercially scalable “Rice Straw Biogas Hub” in the Philippines, funded by Innovate-UK, is poised to solve one of the Asia’s largest agricultural waste problems while delivering new income resilience for millions of small-scale farmers.
Rice straw is the world’s third-largest biomass resource, yet across Asia, an estimated 300 million tons of it are wastefully burned each year. This mass incineration is a major contributor to air pollution and climate change, but it also represents a colossal, missed opportunity to bring clean energy access to the 150 million small-scale rice farmers who need it.
For decades, attempts to profitably collect and use this resource for clean energy have largely failed. However, a multi-year research effort led by UK SME, Straw Innovations Ltd, has culminated in a financially self-sustaining business model ready for wide-scale adoption. The initiative, which builds on earlier UK-funded projects, is now progressing to its first commercial scale through the Rice Straw Biogas Hub project (2021-2024).
The foundation for this breakthrough began in 2013 when Craig Jamieson, founder of Straw Innovations, brought together scientists from the Philippines’ International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the UK’s Supergen Bioenergy Hub. Their comprehensive study identified the key barriers to straw utilization: the techno-economics of collection, the straw’s composition, and a lack of supportive policies and effective business models.
The new Biogas Hub directly addresses these challenges. It is engineered to not only turn waste straw into clean energy but also to provide a suite of revenue-generating services to local farmer cooperatives. Local interviews showed a strong preference among farmers for using the biogas to increase their incomes, rather than simply consuming it.
Consequently, the Hub will offer clean, affordable energy services, including biogas-powered grain drying and storage, crucial for reducing post-harvest losses and increasing crop value. It will also offer efficient milling, with support from UK partner Koolmill Systems Ltd, and a trial of biogas-powered combined-heat-and-pumping for rice irrigation. The ultimate goal is for this Rice Straw Biogas Hub to become financially self-sustaining for Straw Innovations, while simultaneously operating as a showcase model. It is designed to be the first of its kind globally—a robust research, development, and training facility—demonstrating a pioneering, scalable business model that removes previous barriers to entry. This successful demonstration will enable farmer cooperatives throughout the Philippines and Asia to adopt the system for greater income resilience and the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
