Britain's first bio-ethanol production plant opened yesterday in Wissington, Norfolk, and is set to use sugar beets from the neighbouring beet sugar factory (the largest in the world) as the raw ingredient. Pretty sweet.

The British Sugar plant has a production capacity of 70 million litres and uses locally grown sugar beets from surplus crops that wouldn't have otherwise been used in food. Each year the plant will use 110,000 tonnes of the sweet stuff, and it's claimed that the fuel produced will reduce the carbon footprint of regular unleaded petrol by 50-70 per cent.

"These production facilities represent the marrying-up of British agriculture and British engineering technology," said Lord Rooker, the minister for sustainable food and farming and animal health, who opened the plant and who has a very long job title.

The Wissington plant is an important step towards the goals set out by the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), which set a target of five per cent renewable fuel use in the UK by 2010. Needless to say, it will require many more plants like this one.

Bio-ethanol can reduce emissions, but it depends entirely on how the raw material is sourced. There are issues with production in some countries, where growing crops for biofuel pushes up food prices.

This plant doesn't necessarily make the food issue go away -- there's only a finite amount of crop land worldwide, and biofuel is starting to use more of it -- but at least Wissington means that the material doesn't have to be transported a long way before use.