E.ON announces plans for Bristol biomass plant

It may be persona non grata with green groups over its plans to build the UK's first coal fired power station in 20 years, but energy giant E.ON sought to bolster its green credentials yesterday, unveiling plans for a £300m biomass power plant capable of providing energy to quarter of a million homes.

The company said that it filed planning proposals for the 150MW plant at the port of Bristol with North Somerset council and the Department for Business and Enterprise and was hoping to begin work as early as 2010 should approval be granted.

E.ON UK chief executive Paul Golby said the project would make a major contribution to the UK's renewable energy targets and help cut carbon emissions by about 500,000 tonnes a year. The plant, which would represent E.ON's third biomass project in the UK, would also provide heat to businesses near the Royal Portbury Dock.

"Schemes such as this, together with cleaner coal, gas and new nuclear, will help us to keep the UK's lights on, while reducing carbon emissions and ensuring energy is as affordable as possible for our customers," he said.

The government's recently published renewable energy strategy highlighted biomass power plants as a potentially major source of green power, predicting that they could help meet six per cent of the UK's energy needs by 2020. It also outlined plans for a huge expansion of the UK's forestry industry to provide the timber to fuel new plants.

However, environmentalists are divided over the role biomass should play in the UK's energy mix.

Like recent proposals for a co-fired biomass and coal system at Drax's power plant in Yorkshire the E.ON facility is expected to at least in part rely on wo od chips imported into the UK, raising questions about the carbon footprint associated with transporting the required biomass.

Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth recently signalled its opposition to plans for more than 100 new waste incinerators across the UK, many of which operate as waste-to-energy or biomass plants, citing concerns over local air quality and the actual scale of claimed carbon savings.