Under 0.10% of UK's arable land used for bioenergy crops in 2013

Last year, around 51,000 hectares of UK agricultural land were utilised for bioenergy crops – around 0.8% of all arable land in the nation. This is according to a new report, Areas of Crops Grown for Bioenergy in England and the UK: 2008-2013, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

Of this 51,000 hectares of land used for bioenergy, 42,000 of them (just over 80%) were for growing biofuels crops for the transportation sector. DEFRA says that provisional estimates indicate that 787,000 tonnes of UK-produced crops were used for the domestic road transport market in 2013/2014.

This year, 17% of the nation's total maize was consumed in anaerobic digestion plants and used to generate biogas.