Vattenfall to fire up biomass expansion

Scandinavian energy giant Vattenfall has this week called on the EU to extend the definition for biomass power to help ensure the company will be able to source enough officially approved renewable fuel its expanding fleet of biomass generators.

The company announced this week that it is to embark on a €670m (£593m) investment programme to rebuild all its coal-fired power plants in Denmark to support biomass fuel as part of its strategy to become carbon neutral across the Nordic region by 2030.

Vattenfall said that the so-called MaxBio project would see 724,000 tons of coal a year replaced by biomass fuel, resulting in at least 1.5 million tons of carbon emissions being avoided.

The first biomass technology is scheduled to come online from 2018 with the goal of ensuring the company's three largest Danish heat plants will all be biomass fuelled using either 100 per cent biomass or a mixture of biomass and coal.

The first phase of the project will see straw, wood pellets and chips used to power the modified plants, but environmental manager Jørgen Nielsen said that while the company would hope to use other forms of biomass regulations would make it difficult for the company to access different types of sustainable fuel.

"We recognise the advantages of using straw, wood pellets and chips," he said. "We also hope that there will be harmonisation on the legal side, such that more types of biomass fuel will become available. At present, just 15–17 materials have been defined as biomass fuel in the biofuel regulations. All other types of biomass are defined as waste."