UK green-lights first energy park

Peterborough Biomass Energy Park will generate 80 MW of renewable electricity from waste, supplying 60,000 homes in Cambridgeshire, with low-carbon, waste-to-energy technology, circular economy reuse of byproducts, and significant CO2 emissions reduction across the UK.

The government has granted permission for the first energy park in the United Kingdom that will take mixed waste and recycle or remanufacture every element to produce renewable energy, glass, building blocks, metals and other compounds.

The 80-megawatt (MW) facility in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, will be built by Peterborough Renewable Energy Limited (PREL) and is expected to cost about £250 million (US$415 million), a scale comparable to other biomass plants in development.

Located on a 25-acre site at Storey's Bar Gate, the energy park will burn up to 650,000 tonnes of biomass waste to generate enough power for 60,000 homes, displacing about 600,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions annually. The unique aspect of this biomass facility is that additional waste will be remade into other useful products, from building blocks to glass.

The plant is the first of what PREL hopes will be a nationwide network of energy parks.

"We are delighted that the government has given us the go-ahead to build the first renewable energy park in the UK," said PREL Managing Director Chris Williams. "As a nation, we have set ourselves very ambitious renewables targets and only by embracing renewable technologies such as PREL's will we be able to achieve these. Waste can be a valuable resource and using it in a sustainable way will play an essential role in making our future more green."

Energy and Climate Change Minister David Kidney commented: "This plant will provide reliable, low-carbon energy for years to come. The UK needs to generate 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, and, with efforts to encourage biomass growth, energy from biomass could contribute as much as a third of that. Meeting our target means we have to follow the East of England's example and build more plants like this."

The number of UK biomass projects, both planned and in the process of obtaining planning permission, has risen steadily in 2009, though the Drax biomass facility at a UK coal plant faced setbacks that year. Last month, Gaia Power Tees Valley Limited received the go-ahead to build a £200 million (US$331.6 million) biomass plant at Billingham Reach Industrial Estate in Tees Valley, England.

In September, German energy giant E.ON AG revealed plans to build a 150-MW biomass-fired power plant at the Royal Portbury Dock, near Bristol in southeast England while in July, MGT Power received permission to develop one of the world's largest biomass power plants, the 295-MW Tees renewable energy plant.

IIR's Renewable Energy Database provides extensive coverage on the Wind Energy, Geothermal, Hydroelectric, Landfill Gas-to-Energy and Utility-Scale Solar power plants such as the UK's first commercial solar farm project throughout North America, and is now expanding coverage across the world.

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