The UK’s first large-scale wood-burning power station has been officially opened by energy minister Malcolm Wicks.
The £60m SembCorp Biomass Power Station at the Wilton International manufacturing site in Redcar, near Teesside, has been designed to process 300,000 tonnes of waste wood and specially-grown willow a year to generate 30MW of electricity.
That equates to the energy required to power 30,000 homes and will save 200,000 tonnes of carbon emissions compared with a traditional power station, according to SembCorp Utilities, the company behind the development.
“Our challenge is to find innovative ways to generate energy sustainably,” said Mr Wicks. “The Sembcorp Biomass Power Station is a real success story – providing carbon-neutral power to the homes of thousands, using fuel from local sources.”
The Forestry Commission, which is supplying timber from its forests to power the station, added that the opening heralded a “bright future for woodfuel in England” and that the facility would provide new markets for its operations in the north-east.
“Areas of woodland where it would otherwise be uneconomical to harvest and transport material have now found a sustainable local market and can make an important contribution to tackling climate change,” said Paul Hill-Tout, director of Forestry Commission England.
