The Wales Biomass Centre is an umbrella name for the various energy crop projects currently being undertaken by the research staff at Cardiff University’s Llysdinam Field Centre.

Energy Crop research at the Centre began in1992 with the first short rotation willow coppice trials in upland Wales which demonstrated that willow could be grown in these upland sites producing viable commercial yields. In 1999, the Centre was granted European Objective 5b funding on a project called the Salix Project which promoted and demonstrated the use of short rotation willow coppice as a potential for farmland diversification in upland Wales. This project held planting and harvesting demonstration days for various willow sites and produced growing guidelines for willow coppice in Wales. It also tried and tested a novel layflat planting system for Wales (being developed by Border Biofuels at the time) and demonstrated how this planting machine could drive down establishment costs and allow comparative, if not higher, yields than obtained with more traditional planting methods.

When the Salix Project ended in 2002, the Centre was funded through European Objective 2 funds to continue these important willow trials into their second rotation.

More recently, the range of energy crops researched at the Centre has been expanded to include energy grass crops. Currently the Centre is involved with three major energy crop projects.

The Alternative Crops for Renewable Energy (ACRE) project is funded through European Objective 1 ERDF structural funds and supported with WDA funding. The aim is to investigate and promote a range of novel energy crops for the Objective 1 area of Wales. Cardiff University are the project leaders in partnership with the National Botanic Gardens of Wales and ADAS Wales. The project has demonstration sites across Objective 1 areas in Wales in cooperation with the project partners and also Coleg Sir Gar and Pembrokeshire Bio-energy Agency Ltd

The Environmental Impacts of Energy Grass Crops has been investigated as part of a DTI contract. Based in the Herefordshire and working in co-operation with John Amos & Co this project compared the ecology of miscanthus and reed canarygrass and with adjacent land uses, primarily arable crops. As the first ecological study of energy grass crops in the UK this study provided much need informtion on potential impacts of estblaishing commercial areas of energy grass crops.

Helgy i Gymru is another European ERDF Objective 1 funded project lead by the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER). Cardiff University is one of the project partners with the responsibility of assessing the ecological impacts of their network of commercial scale willow trials across Wales.

Further details of these projects and the research findings of the Centre are found throughout the remaining pages of this website. If you require more details, please contact us.