Extracts from NATTA's journal
Renew, issue 144 July- Aug 2003

11. £18m for five Bioenergy plants

£18.74m has been released from the Government’s Bioenergy Capital Grants Scheme for five new plants fuelled by energy crops, wood and agricultural by-products in Somerset, Wiltshire Devon and Staffordshire. The biomass power plants should produce enough heat and electricity to meet the needs of over 90,000 homes- equivalent to a city the size of Southampton. Brian Wilson, then still Energy Minister, said: "The benefits of renewable energy are self-evident. Local businesses, the community and the environment all reap the rewards. Bioenergy is especially beneficial to the rural economy".

The projects are:

• - Peninsula Power in Winkleigh, Devon - £11.5m to develop a 23MW biomass facility fuelled by locally grown energy crops.
• - Roves Energy in Sevenhampton, Wiltshire - £0.96m to build a 2.5Mwe and 5MWth combined heat and power plant (CHP) fuelled by up to 5000 hectares of locally grown energy crops.
• - Charlton Energy Ltd in Frome, Somerset - £2m to build a 7Mwe and 7MWth CHP plant fuelled by forestry wood fuel and energy crops from local farmers and foresters
• - Bronzeoak in Castle Cary, Somerset - £3.8m build a 7MWe and 1.5MWth CHP plant to fuel a wood products facility with electricity and heat as well as supplying heat for curing feedstock
• - Eccleshall Biomass in Eccleshall, Staffordshire- £0.5m to build a 2.2Mwe power station fuelled by locally grown energy crop - ‘elephant grass’ (miscanthus).
• Grants worth over £7m have also been announced from the Capital Grants scheme for biomass projects in Scotland (see below) and Northern Ireland, including £2m for a wood fired CHP plant near Enniskillen.

ARBRE to be saved? A buyer may have been found for the pioneering ARBRE wood chip fired combined cycle gas turbine plant in Yorkshire, currently inoperant due to financial problems (see Renew 141). According to Earthed (May 2003) a company from New England may be willing to take it on, although the Guardian (30/5/03) warned that one of their options was for it to be stripped down and shifted to India.

Scottish Bio-CHP gets £5m

The Department of Trade and Industry’s has approved £5m funding to Energy Power Resources Scotland Limited (EPRL) to help with the construction of a wood-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant for Fort William paper manufacturer, Arjo Wiggins. The money is from the DTI’s Bioenergy Capital Grants Scheme. It is the first application to be granted funding from a new £30m allocation to promote the use of viable bioenergy projects throughout the UK.

The CHP plant at Arjo Wiggins will replace the existing 40-year-old oil fired generator. In addition to supplying the factory’s entire heating requirements it will also contribute up to 80% of their electricity needs with the remaining spare capacity going straight into the national grid. Visiting the Arjo Wiggins factory Energy Minister Brian Wilson said: ‘Great benefits will be derived from this new generator. By switching from heavy fuel oil to wood, CO2 emissions will be reduced by some 40,000 tonnes; the company estimate that its energy bills could be slashed by as much as £750,000 per year; and, the plant will provide a major outlet for creating and preserving jobs in the forestry industry.’

The further deployment of bioenergy in the UK is supported by £66 m Capital Grants Scheme made available for electricity, heat and CHP plant by DTI and the New Opportunities Fund, and the £32.5 m for energy crops establishment and infrastructure made available by DEFRA. The Capital Grants should lead to at least 100MW of electricity from biomass and significant penetration of biomass in the heat market in the UK.

For more discussion of bio-energy policy, see Jonathan Scurlocks overview in the Technology section of Renew 144.