Poland’s new biomass project
May 26, 2010
By Dalkia
May 25, 2010, Paris – Dalkia, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement and Electricité de France (EDF), has started building two boilers in Poland wholly dedicated to biomass.
May 25, 2010, Paris – Dalkia, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement and
Electricité de France (EDF), has started building two boilers in Poland
wholly dedicated to biomass. The project will raise renewable energy
production at Dalkia's
cogeneration plants in Łódź and Poznań to 18%, with a green capacity of
67 MWe.
This is Dalkia's biggest biomass project to date. Starting at the end
of 2011, 700,000 metric tons of biomass, 80% of it from forests, will
be used in place of coal. The €70 million investment is expected to
generate for Dalkia an additional €36.4 million in annual revenues. As
from 2012, the project will exceed Poland's Energy Policy goal of 15%
renewable energy, and will avoid 460,000 metric tons of annual CO2
emissions.
The biomass supply chain will be put in place while work is in
progress on upgrading the boilers, expected to last 18 months. Most of
the fuel will come from outside suppliers, a portion being reserved for
Dalkia Polska's 2,000 hectares of energy plantations in the regions of
Poznan et Elblag.
The cogeneration plants where it is planned to burn the biomass will
be highly energy efficient. Owned by two subsidiaries of Dalkia Polska,
Dalkia Poznan ZEC and Dalkia Lodz, they will feed green power to the
national electric grid and supply heating to the 700,000 inhabitants of
Łódź and Poznań served by those cities' district heating systems.
Dalkia Polska is a subsidiary of Dalkia International (65%) and the
EBRD (35%), and is an acknowledged player in Poland's renewable energy
market. For the past two years, the Łódź and Poznań cogeneration plants
have been burning a mixture of 10% biomass along with coal, producing 3%
green electricity. Dalkia Polska is also looking into the possibilities
of converting domestic waste to energy, and can tap the expertise of
Veolia Environnement for future waste-to-energy projects in Poland's
main cities.
Dalkia operates 176 biomass facilities worldwide, with a combined
capacity of 3,135 MW and 664 MWe, and consuming 1.8 million metric tons
of biomass. It aims to multiply this figure by 6 between now and 2020.
In France, Dalkia is the no. 1 operator of wood-burning power plants.
