ABSTRACT
Protected historic buildings are the most obvious category. This is not a problem because the productive farmland surrounding almost every major city or conurbation has the potential to fill the shortfall, providing a quarter of the total consumption with biogas energy produced using pyrolysis. Pyrolysis occurs when organic or man-made carbon-based matter is heated but starved of the oxygen that is normally part of the process of burning. It is really a high-tech equivalent of traditional charcoal burning, only more efficient and controlled. There is no combustion and there are no atmospheric emissions from the pyrolysis process. When applied as an energy solution at the scale of a community, pyrolysis has other benefits. This is critical when compared with ordinary incineration, to which urban waste is directed, because landfill sites are no longer operating, and there is a cash benefit for anyone prepared to take care of it.
