Small chunks of wood streamed onto a mountain of wood chips nearly 100 feet high, towering over workers making final adjustments at Dominion’s just-reopened Altavista Power Station last Friday as the plant fired up its boilers for the first time in about 2½ years. The plant — reconfigured to burn biomass, or waste wood products, [...]
Wood-Based Power Plant In Kentucky Offers Glimpse Of Mingo Project
A local group working to bring alternative energy projects to the area toured a renewable fuels plant in Campbellsville, Kentucky, recently. The tour came in the wake of an announcement of plans to open a similar plant in Mingo County. The alternative energy facility at the Harless Wood Products Industrial park. The plant will use [...]
Australia’s Curtin University Nets $3.6 Million For Biomass Gasification Project
Australia’s Curtin University received a $3.6 million grant from the nation’s renewable energy agency (ARENA) to support the development of innovative biomass gasification technology at the school’s Fuels and Energy Technology Institute (FETI). The project involves a technology that will convert biomass into a clean fuel for an engine that will then generate electricity. “The [...]
UBC First Canadian University To Produce Heat and Electricity From Biofuel
Recently, the University of British Columbia officially opened a pioneering $34-million clean energy facility, making it Canada’s first university – and one of a few institutions worldwide – to produce both clean heat and electricity for its campus from renewable bioenergy. UBC’s Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility (BRDF) will generate enough clean electricity to power [...]
Biomass Suppliers Sought For Nova Scotia Plant
Nova Scotia Power recently released a formal request for expressions of interest in supplying biomass and related services for its plant currently under construction in Port Hawkesbury. The process launched will include the purchase of approximately 500,000 tons of biomass fuel for Nova Scotia Power’s 60 MW biomass plant, expected to be operational in the [...]
Ironbridge Power Station Plans Switch To Wood Pellet Fuel
Ironbridge Power Station, which generates up to 1,000MW of electricity, is planning to convert to use wood pellets as its main fuel. E.On has applied for permission to build a football pitch sized store on site for the pellets, which would be sourced principally from North America. Due to be decommissioned in 2015, it currently [...]
Southeast Biomass Study: Is It Too Late?
A new study of southeastern forests in the U.S. finds that in the long run, burning wood instead of fossil fuels to make electricity can reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but not soon enough to prevent worsening the conditions leading to global climate change. The study also shows that as the industry expands [...]
Ameresco Starts Up Biomass Power Plant
Following a series of performance tests, Ameresco, Inc. has received its Final Acceptance Certificate from the U.S. Dept. of Energy Savannah River Operations Office for the now operational DOE Savannah River Site (SRS) Biomass Cogeneration Facility (BCF) installed under the $795 million energy savings performance contract (ESPC) awarded to Ameresco in 2009. The 20 MW [...]
Low Natural Gas Prices Undercut Minnesota’s Biomass Projects
Natural gas prices have hit rock-bottom in Minnesota, undercutting the state’s taxpayer-supported efforts to promote statewide biomass energy projects. Minnesota has invested more than $11 million in taxpayer and utility funds to advance technologies that burn biomass for heat and electric generation or convert it to a synthetic gas, but it’s now getting difficult for [...]
State Agency Sides With Nippon Paper On Biomass Energy Project
The Washington Pollution Control Hearings Board (PCHB) has sided with Nippon Paper Industries USA in a challenge from several environmental groups to its $71 million biomass energy project at its paper mill in Port Angeles, Wash. Green organizations are fighting biomass expansion projects at the Nippon mill in Port Angeles and the Port Townsend Paper [...]