Construction has started on a £9 million biomass plant in Bedfordshire which will divert up to 30,000 tonnes of waste wood from landfill each year.
The plant will generate 2.6MW of renewable energy once it is completed during summer 2011. The development is situated in a disused 1960s Ministry of Defence research and development building at Thurleigh in the north of the county.
Yorkshire-based Bioflame is supplying the combustion technology to the plant, which is permitted by the Environment Agency and compliant with the Waste Incineration Directive. Growing Beds will provide feedstock for the plant and day-to-day site supervision.
Growing Beds, which has headquarters at Ravensden, currently has a contract with Bedfordshire county council to handle green waste – including wood – from its household waste and recycling centres. This will comprise the majority of waste wood being treated by the biomass facility.
The joint venture will operate the biomass site as Twinwoods Heat and Power Limited, which has signed a contract with an unnamed supermarket giant, which intends to purchase the energy output from the site under a long-term arrangement.
Plans for the biomass facility were first unveiled in March 2009. It is anticipated that the site would be up-and-running by May 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, a spokeswoman for the firm told letsrecycle.com that the project had been delayed by the onset of the economic downturn. “It was affected by the economic downturn, basically it has taken longer than anticipated to get funding,” she said.
An undisclosed amount of funding for the site was also received in the form of a loan from the Cooperative Bank.
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