The Prince of Wales' estate, financier Jacob Rothschild, and supermarket giant Sainsbury's are among a number of investors to back a company looking to develop a UK network of over 40 anaerobic digestion (AD) plants.

Start-up Tamar Energy has raised £65m to build the plants, which it estimates will generate 100MW of electricity from organic waste over the next five years. The biogas produced from the process can also be injected into the gas grid.

The company has purchased waste to energy company AdGen, which already has an advanced pipeline of projects that it says will allow it it ramp up its operations at a rapid rate.

Tamar hopes to exploit what it sees as an underdeveloped market in the UK, where there are just over 200 plants producing around 170MW, around one per cent of the capacity in Germany.

Chairman Alan Lovell, former chief executive of Infinis, a UK renewable energy developer backed by private equity house Terra Firma, called the project a 'game-changing investment'.

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