Tag Archives: biomass
€6 Million Funding For French Biomass Project
13 November 2013 DEINOVE, a developer of chemical compounds from biomass using Deinococci bacteria, has announced that its plant chemistry development programme will receive nearly €6 million from the French government. The DEINOCHEM programme aims to produce a new generation of chemical compounds to replace petro-sourced chemicals. Using Deinococci bacteria, these new compounds are made from non-food biomass such as wheat straw, corn stover and cobs, energy crops, and industrial and urban waste. “We are delighted to support this internationally-ambitious French industrial project,” said Arnaud Montebourg, French minister of industrial renewal. “ DEINOVE was founded in France and works on developing solutions for tomorrow with breakthrough technologies . which are included as part of French innovations that need to be heavily supported in order to join the world-wide race.” “This is one of the highest levels of financial backing ever granted in plant chemistry from the French government,” said Emmanuel Petiot, CEO of DEINOVE. “Our country has clearly placed biotechnologies at the heart of its industrial innovation programme.” Europe is the world’s second largest agricultural producer and France is the top agricultural producer in Europe. Continue reading
Case Study: Biomass Fuels Industrial Rebirth In The UK
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/feef6d66-252e-11e3-b349-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2ik4Cp6up October 14, 2013 Case study: biomass fuels industrial rebirth in the UK By Michael Kavanagh Ironbridge, the 18th century birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and Drax, the UK’s biggest coal-fired power station, are helping to change the shape of the country’s energy future. Both sites were developed as centres of coal-based power generation because of their proximity to a fuel source that was then cheap and in plentiful supply. Both have now emerged as 21st century centres of eco-friendly biomass burning. In the case of Drax, preparations are being made by the UK’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide for the conversion next year of the second of its six power generation units to biomass, predominantly pellets derived from woodchip culled from forests overseas. A third unit is expected to switch from coal in 2015 under a plan requiring a £700m investment. Drax is western Europe’s biggest coal powered station switching to imported biomass. The switch of half of Drax’s generating capacity to biomass requires specially-designed rail wagons, boilers and storage facilities. It will enable the plant to continue to operate as the UK’s largest electricity producer, accounting for 7 per cent of the UK’s supply on average, well into the next decade. The story at Ironbridge, operated by German-owned power group Eon, is more complicated. The power plant, situated less than a kilometre away from the Ironbridge world heritage site, was scheduled to close under the terms of an EU directive aimed at limiting emissions from coal-fired plants. Ironbridge, one of two biomass-fuelled plants operated by Eon in the UK, has been given a new lease of life by being converted to run on wood pellets. Even so, the plant is still scheduled to close by 2015. But as Ironbridge prepares for closure Eggborough Power Station, another major UK coal-fired station based near Selby in Yorkshire, is planning to extend its use of biomass fuel stock that already includes items as exotic as olive pellets and olive cake. These are blended with the pulverised coal before it reaches the boilers. Beyond the encouragement of co-mingling and biomass-dedicated conversions at the UK’s largest coal-fired stations, a raft of smaller-scale biomass ventures are also scheduled. Renewable energy company Eco2 recently confirmed it had won £128m in financing backing to build a power station in Lincolnshire that will be fuelled by straw and capable of generating enough energy to supply 70,000 households. The company has already developed another state-of-the-art biomass plant designed to burn the large volume of dry stalk residue left from cereal farming in east England that complements another plant to the south of England’s cereal belt operated by rival company Energy Power Resources in Ely, Cambridgeshire. And last month the Western Wood Energy Plant near Port Talbot, south Wales, announced further financial backing and supply agreements to support expansion of a biomass burning unit fuelled on virgin and recycled wood waste supplied in part by the UK’s Forestry Commission. Ironically the drive towards increased co-mingling of coal biomass and investment in conversion of coal-fired generation units to biomass coincides with a fall in global coal prices. This has boosted imports of a fuel widely seen as being the least environmentally-friendly feedstock used by electricity suppliers. But latest statistics released last month by the Department of Energy and Climate Change also pointed to a year-on-year jump, in the three months to June, of nearly 60 per cent in the contribution that bioenergy made to overall electricity supply. This includes the co-firing of biomass with coal across Britain’s fleet of power stations, In total renewables’ share of the UK’s electricity generation increased from 9.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2012, to 15.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2013. Biomass accounted for two-fifths of this total of 12.8 Terawatt hours supplied to the grid. Wind power contributed half of renewable output, with hydropower, solar, wave and tidal power schemes contributing the residue. DECC attributed the jump in bioenergy output last quarter to the conversion of Ironbridge and switch of one Drax unit to biomass, along with the return of Tilbury B power station to operation after a fire earlier this year. But Tilbury B, like Ironbridge, has stopped operating, despite its conversion to biomass. Its owner RWE Npower blamed the failure to secure sufficient subsidy to pursue its plan to keep it open for a further 10 to 12 years as a biomass burner. The eventual scale of take-up of biomass power generation in the UK, then, remains uncertain and subject to the vagaries of government subsidies and guarantees. But even if there is no hope for the UK to be self-sufficient in production of biomass fuel, proponents argue there is plenty of feedstock available globally, if not locally, to accommodate a further large switch away from fossil fuels should public policy allow. A recent paper published by the US Department of Energy suggests that logging waste and other residue created by forestry husbandry in the US creates 93m tonnes of dry biofuel feedstock a year that could be used in preference to coal if processed for shipment to power plants domestically or abroad. That volume of unexploited US wood waste dwarfs Drax’s predicted requirement of 7m tonnes a year. Though much of Drax’s supply is expected to come from outside North America, the company is investing in two pellet production plants in Mississippi and Louisiana and has also struck a long-term contract for the supply of pellets from pine wood killed by beetle attacks in western Canada. Support for biomass power projects is not universal. Plans to expand the UK’s use of biomass for electricity generation have been attacked by many environmental campaigners, who have warned of the dangers of overexploitation of forest habitats and possible disruption to local communities in developing countries caused by any switch to commercial biomass crops. But the UK’s Back Biomass Campaign, supported by the Renewable Energy Association, defends the green credentials of imported biomass fuel stock. It argues that, if properly culled and processed at source, the shipping of biomass in large volumes can be as equally carbon-efficient as transporting dispersed, locally produced biomass material by truck to generator plants. But with Ironbridge and Tilbury set for closure, Drax and Eggborough are set to emerge as the two champions of large-scale biomass generation. The driver of any further expansion of biomass as a renewable energy source in the UK appears set to depend on further encouragement – and subsidy – from government. Continue reading
India Increases Effort to Harness Biomass Energy
Manpreet Romana for The New York Times Workers collect rice straw from the fields in Baghoura, a village in northern India. By AMY YEE Published: October 8, 2013 GHANAUR, India — THE hulking power plant set against the green countryside of Punjab state in northwest India does not look like a source of renewable energy. Yet filling its stockyard, instead of mounds of coal, are bales of rice straw. Machines break up the heavy straw cubes as men with pitchforks hoist fibrous mounds onto a conveyor belt leading to the power plant. Handkerchiefs cover their faces to protect them from dust swirling in the air. Manpreet Romana for The New York Times Workers inspect the machinery at a biomass energy plant in northern India. This is Punjab Biomass Power, a plant near the village of Ghanaur that collects the straw collected from farmers tilling the lush fields of the surrounding countryside. After harvest, they would normally burn this agricultural waste, inedible to people and animals, to clear fields for wheat crops, as farmers across India do, and in that way contribute to the country’s dire air pollution. But at Punjab Biomass, 120,000 tons of rice straw a year are instead burned to generate 12 megawatts of electricity for the state’s power grid. The plant produces emissions, although its filters reduce the amount that outdoor burning would generate. But such biomass energy in theory is considered carbon-neutral because of what these plants use as fuel — like sugar cane pulp and nut shells that took carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it grew. Biomass power plants are eligible for carbon credits that translate into cash, and Punjab Biomass hopes to eventually earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the plant. Yet biomass is far from a solution to the enormous energy needs of India and its 1.2 billion people. Alternative energy, like wind, biomass and solar, accounted for less than 8 percent of India’s power generation in 2009. Still, because India imports about 70 percent of its oil and natural gas and relies on coal for more than half of its electricity generation, it must consider all options for energy. In April, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for a doubling of India’s nonconventional energy supply, including biomass, from 25,000 megawatts in 2012 to 55,000 megawatts by 2017. “Energy is both scarce and expensive and yet it is vital for development,” said Mr. Singh at the Clean Energy Ministerial in New Delhi. Developing countries “have to expand all sources of supply, including both conventional and nonconventional energy,” he said. Agricultural waste in India is abundant, since roughly 60 percent of its population relies on agriculture for a living. Sunil Dhingra, a senior fellow at the Energy Resources Institute (TERI), a Delhi-based policy center, estimated that India produced 600 million tons of such “agro-waste” each year, 150 to 200 tons of which are not used. This is “a big resource that needs to be channelized,” he said. Some European countries have already successfully harnessed biomass energy. In Finland, biomass such as leaves and wood from its abundant, managed forest industry accounts for 20 percent of the energy supply, according to the European Biomass Industry Association. Sixteen percent of Sweden’s energy comes from biomass. And nearly half of upper Austria’s renewable energy comes from biomass; the region aims to use renewable energy for all of its heat and energy demand by 2030 . Punjab Biomass began operations in November 2010 after converting the existing coal power plant at the site, an option less expensive than building a new plant or solar or wind farm. In Britain and other parts of Europe, some coal-fired plants are converting to biomass to comply with new European environmental regulations, said David Hostert, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London. In India, biomass has the potential to generate at least 18,000 megawatts of electricity, according to the country’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Biomass energy can be produced through big power plants but also in small, rural gasifiers for grass-roots industries like brick kilns. Mr. Dhingra of TERI estimated that there were 800 to 900 biomass power plants and 3,000 small thermal gasifiers across India. Biomass energy also generates extra income for Indian farmers. Punjab Biomass pays 15,000 farmers about 500 rupees, about $8, per acre of rice straw that would otherwise be burned. But there are many challenges to expanding biomass energy, especially collecting, storing and transporting the agricultural waste to power plants. Most farms are fragmented, without organized disposal operations, so energy companies need fleets of threshers and tractors to collect agro-waste from fields. Enough fodder to run a power plant for 11 months must be collected and stored. Punjab Biomass runs mainly on rice straw, but it is considering other agro-waste unfit for livestock, like corn and cotton stalks and sugar cane waste to supplement its current supply. Biomass is stored in enormous depots and must be kept dry even in India’s heavy rains. Companies must get clearance for large swaths of land to store fodder — no easy task in bureaucratic India. Murad Ali Baig, director of Bermaco Energy Systems, one of the partners in the Punjab plant, admitted that getting the plant running “should have taken 18 months but took four years.” The logistics of storing and transporting fodder and maintaining fuel-guzzling equipment is far more complicated than it seems in unpredictable India. “It’s been bloody hard work,” said Mr. Baig. The company is operationally profitable, but still has losses from its first couple of years of business. Still, the company aims to build eight more rice-straw energy plants in Punjab state to generate 96 megawatts of electricity by 2017. Across India, Bermaco hopes to set up about 20 biomass plants generating 240 megawatts during the next three years and about 1,000 megawatts in the next six years. While there is potential for biomass energy in India, the country lacks the efficiency, logistical infrastructure and investments of countries like Finland. There, the public and private sector have invested heavily in research and development. Huge warehouses store leaves and wood to ensure steady, efficient supplies of fodder from well-managed forests. In India, biomass “is low-tech, but let’s invest, like the example we’ve seen in Europe,” Mr. Dhingra of TERI, said. “Industry, academia and government all work on one platform there. You don’t see that happening here.” This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 11, 2013 An article on Wednesday about turning rice stalks into biomass energy in India misstated an estimate by the Energy Resource Institute in New Delhi of the nation’s annual amount of unused agricultural waste. It is 150 million tons to 200 million tons, not 150 tons to 200 tons. Continue reading
