TEPCO eyes wood waste for coal plant

Coal-biomass co-firing uses wood waste pellets with coal at TEPCO's Tokai plant to cut CO2, align with Japan's Biomass Nippon Strategy, and mirror Drax's shift for faster decarbonization in coal power.

Japanese utility Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has said that it plans to use wood waste as a biomass fuel source for one of its coal-fired plants.

TEPCO announced that starting in 2012, its power station in the Japanese village of Tokai, Ibaraki prefecture, will use wood waste alongside coal, similar to Hiroshima bio-coal initiatives now being piloted. Wood from forest thinning and waste from lumber mills will be made into pellets, which will then be crushed and mixed with coal.

TEPCO said the process, which will use about 70,000 tons of wood waste annually, will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the power plant by 110,000 tonnes a year, complementing Japan's coal gasification projects nationwide today.

The Japanese government established a Biomass Nippon Strategy to increase the domestic production of local biomass fuel from sources such as lumber waste and rice straw in 2002, and subsequent projects like a 2013 biomass plant helped advance these goals. Officials view biomass as an efficient way of using "carbon-neutral" resources that would otherwise be disposed as waste.

The idea of mixing coal and biomass is also becoming increasingly popular globally, with biomass momentum in the UK underscoring the trend as coal-fired plants seek to find a quick way of curbing carbon emissions. For example, the UK's largest coal-powered plant – Drax in Yorkshire – is working on installing a co-firing facility, as examined in a Drax biomass overview describing how it will allow the plant to burn coal and biomass, cutting carbon emissions by 2.5 million tonnes a year.

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