BUSINESSES in Oxfordshire will next month be offered Ecotricity - electricity generated at sewage treatment works in the county.

Thames Water Utilities has teamed up with the Renewable Energy Company, Europe's largest green energy company, to launch the Ecotricity joint venture to make green electricity available to firms from April 1.

There are plans to make it available to residential customers early next year.

Thames Water has invested about £39m in combined heat and power technology at sewage works, including those at Oxford and Swindon.

Between 1990 and 1992, it set up plants to generate electricity from methane gas under the first two rounds of the Government's non-fossil fuel obligation scheme that obliges generators to buy power from such schemes.

Ecotricity will be offered at market prices as the joint venture will avoid the transmission charges usually levied by the National Grid.

Thames Water's own 3,500 sites will be powered with the new green electricity under the deal.

Gordon Maxwell, managing director of Thames Water Utilities, said: "This is a pioneering partnership which underlines our commitment to the environment through supporting sustainable energy projects."

The agreement between Renewable Energy and Thames Water was announced by Energy Minister John Battle.

He said: "We are currently reviewing new and renewable energy policy, in particular to identify what would be necessary and practicable to achieve ten per cent of the UK's electricity needs from renewables in 2010."

Story date: Tuesday 09 March

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