A HAMPSHIRE college has unveiled plans to build a new renewable energy plant near Winchester.

The anaerobic digester – a large boiler turning grass into gas – is expected to produce power for the equivalent of nearly 5,000 homes per year.

But the plans, announced alongside a college training initiative for the green gas sector, have worried parish councillors and some countryside campaigners.

College chiefs say the facility, branded the Green Gas Mill, will supply the campus and national grid, as well as enabling a new connection pushing down gas prices for locals.

Sparsholt parish councillors are concerned about the plant’s smell and size, as well as tractors using the village’s single track roads to carry grass and maize for processing.

Chairman of Keep Hampshire Green Douglas Paterson has previously described the plant as a “monster in green clothing”, warning it will intrude on the village and leave a poor carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, the college announced plans to create a Centre of Excellence for Environmental Technologies, training specialist professionals in the green gas industry.

Principal Tim Jackson said: “It’s an exciting time for the college in developing our status as a ‘Centre for Demonstration of Environmental Technologies’, which is being supported by Ecotricity and through a grant from the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership.

“We’re significantly expanding our rooftop solar panel array, we’ve submitted a planning application for a wind turbine, we are intending to expand our wood fuel technologies and we’re now putting ourselves at the centre of what is the future of gas generation in Britain.

“The Centre of Excellence will be a key resource to develop specialist professionals to work for the green gas industry, training engineers, plant managers and technicians in what is a jobs-growth area across the agriculture, energy, waste, water and food processing sectors.”

Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, the firm building the digester, said biogas generation was a greener alternative to fracking.

He said: “Green gas is big opportunity for Britain – it can make a big contribution to reducing carbon emissions and making us more energy independent; and theoretically there’s enough non-food producing farmland in Britain to meet 95 per cent of Britain’s domestic and commercial needs."

“Compare that to fracking, which Defra’s recent report has shown has significant environmental and health risks, plus it could reduce house prices by up to seven per cent and that’s before any of the problems start happening.”

He added: “We introduced the concept of making gas from grass in April and the Sparsholt Green Gas Mill will be one of the first four we’ll be putting into planning this year.

“It’s a very exciting new concept – green gas is carbon neutral, it supports food production, it’s sustainable and it actually benefits wildlife and the local environment, creating new habitats.”