Spain Gives Green Light to Country's Largest Biomass Plant

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Spain's leading producer of biomass energy, Ence (Madrid), has received permission to build the country's largest biomass power plant.

The Andalusian administration gave the green light to proceed with the 50-megawatt (MW) project in Huelva, in southwestern Spain. The news comes only weeks after the local government in the province of Galicia shot down plans for the company's proposed biomass plant at its 430,000-tonne-per-year eucalyptus pulp mill in Pontevedra, in northern Spain.

The Huelva project is valued at approximately 80 million euros ($105 million), and according to Ence 400 jobs will be created during construction and the ongoing cultivation, harvesting and transportation of biomass fuel. The plant was unveiled by in Huelva by Spain's Minister for Innovation, Science and Enterprise, Martín Soler, and Ence Group CEO Antonio Palacios. The new plant will be commissioned in late 2011.

Ence, which manages about 116,000 hectares of forests in Spain, Portugal and Uruguay, has an existing manufacturing complex in Huelva which produces pulp from eucalyptus wood and energy from biomass. The facility has a heat and power capacity of 68.5 MW, which will double to 118 MW with the construction of the new plant. Upon completion, the plant will generate enough power for 350,000 households, while offsetting 182,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Ence uses biomass from two main sources, wood bark and forest residue.

The project will contribute significantly to the Andalusian Energy Sustainability Plan, which aims to generate 256 MW of electricity from biomass by 2013. Today, Spain's Ontario province leads the country in biomass-fired power generation. Ontario has 15 biomass-fired plants producing 164 MW, which is 44% of the national total biomass-fired power production.

In March this year, Ence unveiled plans to invest as much as 525 million euros ($689 million) on biomass projects throughout Spain. The company wants to fire up new biomass power plants with a total generating capacity of 210 MW by 2014. At the moment, Ence generates about 230 MW from its Spanish power plants, with 180 MW of that coming from biomass.

Ence currently runs the country's largest standalone biomass energy plant at Navia, which has a generating capacity of 37 MW, but is restricted to producing 28 MW because of grid limitations.

In related news, Spanish sustainable development company Acciona SA (MCE:ANA) (Madrid) has connected its second straw-burning biomass plant in Briviesca to the Spanish electricity grid. The 16-MW plant will burn approximately 102,000 metric tons of straw annually to produce 128 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy.

IIR's Renewable Energy Database provides extensive coverage on the wind energy, geothermal, hydroelectric, landfill gas-to-energy and utility-scale solar power plants throughout North America, and is now expanding coverage across the world.

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