Lincolnshire to get biomass power hub

Lincolnshire is to get one of the UK's largest biomass power plants, after energy minister Malcolm Wicks gave the go ahead yesterday for a 65MW facility near Stallingborough.

Helius Energy plc, which will build the £200m plant, said that it would provide enough power for 100,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by 450,000 compared to a similar sized coal-fired power station.

Wicks said that as well as contributing to the UK's renewable energy targets, the plant would also provide valuable jobs to the region, with 267 full time jobs expected to be created during the construction phase and a further 75 permanent full time jobs working a shift pattern when the plant is running.

Large scale biomass facilities have attracted some criticism, with environmentalists concerned over recent plans to install co-firing technology capable of burning biomass as well as coal at the Drax coal-fired plant in Yorkshire, on the grounds that much of the timber used to fuel the plant will come from overseas.

However, John Seed, managing director of Helius Energy insisted that the new Lincolnshire facility would be sourced on "sustainable biomass" with the plant expected to be fuelled initially by waste wood, specially grown energy crops and leftovers from timber processing activities sourced from the UK and Europe.

The power station is expected to form the centrepiece of a major biomass energy hub after Wicks also granted approval for the building of an additional biomass processing facility and bioethanol and biodiesel refinery on the same site.

The department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) said that the long term intention is that spent grains from the bioethanol plant and glycerol from the biodiesel plant will eventually be used as the fuel feedstock for the power station. At full capacity the processing plant which will produce approximately 250,000 tonnes of bioethanol and 100,000 tonnes of biodiesel a year.