Agricultural innovation
At Future Biogas, innovation isn’t just a buzzword — it’s how we keep pushing the boundaries of what biogas can deliver for climate, agriculture, and industry. Our Research & Development programme is designed to unlock new performance, and environmental and economic value across the entire biogas chain — from soil to gas molecule.
Our scientific research begins with the soil in which we grow our crops. Through our field trials, we are looking at all elements that influence the growing of energy crops and how this can benefit farms and wider rotations. To date our research has looked at: soil carbon accumulation, nitrogen use efficiency, variety trials, cover cropping and companion cropping.
These trials are developed in partnership with academic experts and overseen by our Agricultural Advisory Board, ensuring that every insight is not only field-tested but scientifically credible.
But our R&D goes deeper — into the biology of our plants. Our in-house laboratory team continuously monitors the microbial populations within our anaerobic digestion systems, optimising the conditions that allow these communities to thrive and produce more efficient, stable gas yields.
We are now collaborating with a UK university to train an AI model on our lab data, aiming to predict biological performance, flag anomalies, and drive early intervention. This is one of the first efforts in the sector to use machine learning to optimise the biology of AD in real-time.
We’re also proud to support and participate in larger-scale research initiatives, including partnerships with Supergen Bioenergy Hub, where we contribute data and commercial expertise to help inform the UK’s wider energy transition. Whether we’re trialling new seed varieties, refining digestate strategies, or investing in lab-scale innovation, our focus remains the same: to ground our growth in evidence, experimentation and long-term impact.