Welsh Biofuels Ltd was awarded the grant, under the government's Renewable Energy Programme, to subsidise the purchase of waste wood-fueled boilers for the firm's customers.
The Bridgend-based company takes in old wooden planks and pallets, which are then ground into flour and compressed into pellets. These are then used by small-scale power generators, businesses, public facilities and domestic consumers to fuel boilers and heating systems.
Carbon neutral
Welsh Biofuels produces around 50,000 tonnes of pellets a year. The fuel is exempt from the Climate Change Levy because it is classified as carbon neutral: the carbon that is released into the atmosphere on burning the wood is the same it absorbed from the atmosphere when it grew.
“It is estimated that more than 1.25 million tonnes of waste wood goes into landfill in Wales each year,” managing director Martin Jolly explained. “We source our wood from companies or stores within the Bridgend area and also from energy crops such as willow.”
Mr Jolly believes there will be increased custom in this area, with the added benefits of increased employment opportunities.
“In Denmark, the renewable energy industry employs more than 25,000 people, and we believe that can be the same here,” he said.
Opportunities
The area of biomass fuels is of increasing interest to the wood recycling industry at the moment, as companies seek to take advantage of government incentives on renewable energy. The Wood Recyclers' Association is looking into the opportunities biomass may hold as a market alternative to the manufacture of chipboard.
However, according to one biomass power generator letsrecycle.com spoke to, the large-scale use of waste wood in power generation is being delayed by the “hostile economic climate”. The bad news for wood recyclers is that the price of chipped wood – currently around 20 to 26 a tonne is offered by boardmills for quality chipped wood – is seen as too high by biomass power generators.
Energy Power Resources, which runs several energy-from-waste facilities including plants that run on chicken litter and a new straw-powered plant in Cambridgeshire, is one of the largest biomass power generators in the country. However, according to commercial director Malcolm Chiltern, the company sees future growth in wind power at this time, rather than waste wood biomass.
Viability
“We own a 50% stake in Yorkshire Wind Power,” Mr Chiltern said, “so there we are looking at fuel that you don't have to pay for at all. So at the moment, we don't see waste wood biomass as viable. The potential is there, but though you tend to find government support mechanisms are pretty good for wind or landfill gas power generation, the support mechanisms for wood biomass are not really adequate.”
However, Mr Chiltern did forsee that circumstances could change in the near future. He said: “Biomass should be around a third of our renewable totals in the UK. We do have two woodchip schemes ready to go – we have planning permission and everything. But we are awaiting viability – the environment for biomass at the moment is hostile.”
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