RWE npower closes biomass power station in Tilbury

Industry experts say the
closing of the plant is going to cause a lot of concern. People are going to be
more worried about the U.K.'s ability to keep the lights on moving forward. The
fear of blackouts has already been all over the news thanks to European Union
regulations that will see a number of coal power plants closed down in the next
few years.

According to RWE npower the
reason for the station's closure is due to a lack of investment. The station
has been working hard on converting biomass into energy to replace dirty coal.
However, trying to make enough energy out of wood and waste oil to reach the
planned capacity of 750MW of energy proved to be too huge of a task to
overcome.

RWE npower said that it is
not closing down this station due to the challenge of converting biomass into
energy but instead it is closing it down solely on the lack of funding. Of
course, experts saw this one coming after investors admitted that they were
skeptical of the government's plans to change subsidies for biomass. Without
these subsidies, companies are not willing to put a lot of money into this
relatively young form of energy.

The station used to be just
a coal power plant. However, due to new European Union regulations, the station
had to make a switch. This is when the RWE npower decided to turn it into a
biomass burning station.