Help us protect our countryside, productive farmland, heritage site and wildlife habitat before it’s too late. Together, we can do it.
Acorn Bioenergy Ltd have applied to West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) for planning permission to construct and operate one of the largest anaerobic digestion plants in the country, on productive greenfield land to the west of the A43 (just off the roundabout as you turn right to Croughton, coming from Brackley). Aynho, Barley Mow, Brackley, Charlton, Cottisford, Croughton, Evenley, Farthinghoe, Fringford, Fulwell, Hardwick, Hethe, Hinton in the Hedges, Juniper, Mixbury, Turweston, Westbury - all local villages and towns will be catastrophically impacted. Their first application was denied, but their appeal hearing has been confirmed for August 19th 2025.
Crop-fed anaerobic digestion like this is explicitly discouraged by UK and EU guidance and delivers weak or even negative carbon savings.
Anaerobic digestion can be a good way to use waste to create biofuel, when it’s done efficiently and responsibly. That means using locally available waste - and only waste - on land that can’t be used for much else. This is not what would happen here.
Acorn’s plan would use almost 100,000 tonnes of crops, not just waste, every year to undergo anaerobic digestion. (Find out more about why that’s a problem here.)That would require nearly 7,000 acres of farmland… that’s the equivalent of 4840 football pitches! That’s 7,000 acres taken out of food production, not to mention the potential food crops that would be taken out of circulation by destroying productive farmland to build the plant in the first place.
The plans would destroy ancient countryside, productive arable greenfield farmland and a rare heritage site.
It would see a polluting, foul odour “almost like a combination of dog's muck and burnt plastic” reach for miles.
It would make local roads even more congested and dangerous, with more than 9,000 additional tractors, trailers and heavy goods vehicles a year (an almost 70% increase).
This rural site is not in WNC’s designated area of growth and astonishingly, Acorn Bioenergy has not even been able to demonstrate a need for this facility. Constructing a site of this kind here would set a dangerous precedent, leaving the way open for more greenfield spaces to be built on unnecessarily.
The site would cover 15 acres (that’s 5 Evenley village greens or 13 football pitches - big enough to park 4,000 double decker buses!)
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