Green light for £500m biomass plant
England’s biggest biomass power station, a £500m plant at Teesport, near Middlesbrough, was given the go-ahead on Wednesday .The 295-megawatt capacity renewable energy plant, capable of generating enough electricity to meet the needs of 600,000 homes, will be one of the world’s biggest biomass plants.
Announced on Wednesday to coincide with the unveiling of the government’s low-carbon strategies, the plant is expected to save 1.2m tonnes of CO2 per year and account for 5.5 per cent of the UK’s renewable electricity target.
David Kidney, the energy minister, said: “In just over 10 years’ time, 40 per cent of the country’s electricity will come from low-carbon sources, like biomass.”
The British company developing the wood-fuelled power station is MGT Power, established 18 months ago to develop biomass-generation projects in the UK and continental Europe. Main shareholders include Trafalgar Asset Managers and MKM Longboat. An as yet unnamed international group of four banks, including a UK high-street name, will provide debt finance for the project, MGT’s first.
The Teesport power station, to be built on the South Dock area, owned by PD Ports, won local authority planning approval last November and hasnow received final approval from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The plant will use 2.4m tonnes of woodchips each year, sourced from North and South America and the Baltic states, and is expected to produce the same amount of renewable electricity over a year as a 1,000MW wind farm.
Chris Moore, director of MGT, said the plant had secured an early connection date to National Grid, to which it would export power from 2012.
“Other, similarly sized biomass plants are proposed in other parts of the country but our Teesport project is currently two years ahead of the pack and likely to be one of the first to be operational,” he said.
This article was published in the Financial Times and can be seen here
England’s biggest biomass power station, a £500m plant at Teesport, near Middlesbrough, was given the go-ahead on Wednesday .The 295-megawatt capacity renewable energy plant, capable of generating enough electricity to meet the needs of 600,000 homes, will be one of the world’s biggest biomass plants.
Announced on Wednesday to coincide with the unveiling of the government’s low-carbon strategies, the plant is expected to save 1.2m tonnes of CO2 per year and account for 5.5 per cent of the UK’s renewable electricity target.
David Kidney, the energy minister, said: “In just over 10 years’ time, 40 per cent of the country’s electricity will come from low-carbon sources, like biomass.”
The British company developing the wood-fuelled power station is MGT Power, established 18 months ago to develop biomass-generation projects in the UK and continental Europe. Main shareholders include Trafalgar Asset Managers and MKM Longboat. An as yet unnamed international group of four banks, including a UK high-street name, will provide debt finance for the project, MGT’s first.
The Teesport power station, to be built on the South Dock area, owned by PD Ports, won local authority planning approval last November and hasnow received final approval from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The plant will use 2.4m tonnes of woodchips each year, sourced from North and South America and the Baltic states, and is expected to produce the same amount of renewable electricity over a year as a 1,000MW wind farm.
Chris Moore, director of MGT, said the plant had secured an early connection date to National Grid, to which it would export power from 2012.
“Other, similarly sized biomass plants are proposed in other parts of the country but our Teesport project is currently two years ahead of the pack and likely to be one of the first to be operational,” he said.
This article was published in the Financial Times and can be seen here
