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The UK Government has signed off seven more Regional Growth Fund deals helping two waste energy projects to get going along with a factory scheme and science park, including one Anaerobic Digestion Plant.
Here is the news item:
INTRODUCTION
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced a further two bidding rounds for cash after the Chancellor revealed plans to set aside a further £1bn pot of cash to create jobs.
Cities will be encouraged to put forward innovative programmes and packages of projects in future rounds.
Clegg said: “This additional billion pound boost for British businesses means the Regional Growth Fund will create an estimated half a million jobs before the end of this parliament.
“With this targeted support for companies we’re unlocking private sector investment, with at least £5 put in for every £1 of public money.
The Regional Growth Fund was launched in October 2010.
So far it has allocated £1.4bn through two bidding rounds. There were 50 successful projects in the first round sharing £450m. More than 50% of the projects from the first round are already up and running.
In the second round, 119 bids received conditional allocations of funding, with a further 10 requiring further discussion.
Of these 10, seven have funding conditionally allocated to them, increasing the number of bids receiving a share of £950m to 126, and the total of new and existing jobs supported to 244,000.
Of the 244,000 jobs created or protected, around 38,000 will be directly created jobs, and more than 170,000 will be in the supply chain.
AND THE AD PLANT IS:
A BF Biogas Limited Project to build an anaerobic digestion plant in Teesside, converting food and garden waste into biogas for power generation.
The Maabjerg BioEnergy biogas plant while under construction: 31 August 2011
Danish energy company, DONG Energy is establishing a green energy consortium with local players to determine if a number of bioenergy projects, including waste to energy projects are technically and economically viable.
Over the coming 15 months, the consortium - Mabjerg Energy Concept - will explore project opportunities in the form of new plants and conversion of existing plants.
According to the consortium, all projects will be within the scope of green energy generation based on local biomass and waste resources, which will be used to generate a range of energy products, including biogas, hydrogen, bioethanol and electricity and heat.
The consortium says that it will look specifically at the possibilities of constructing a second-generation bioethanol plant, expanding the existing Maabjerg BioEnergy anaerobic digestion plant by adding a hydrogen generation plant, as well as converting the existing biomass-fired CHP plant to enable it to handle waste products from the bioethanol plant in future.
Additionally, the consortium will study the possibility of constructing a waste treatment plant that will use enzymes to separate waste fractions for use in biogas production.
Besides DONG Energy, the participants in Mabjerg Energy Concept are: Vestforsyning, Struer Forsyning and the waste company Nomi. Jorgen Udby, Vestforsyning's CEO, is the chairman of the consortium.
"The establishment of Mabjerg Energy Concept will boost the opportunities for Danish research and, especially, export of green energy know-how," says Thomas Dalsgaard, senior vice president of DONG Energy.
KUALA LUMPUR: It appears to be a case of communication breakdown.
European investors are lining up money to fund biomass projects in Malaysia but the local oil palm plantation industry doesn't seem to know this.
(We were unable to find a video about Malaysian Palm Oil Energy production, however, we did find this very interesting video about a program in Thailand.)
According to the European Union (EU)-Malaysia Biomass Sustainable Production Initiative (Biomass-SP), an EU-led industry body, there are 10 investors keen to fund biomass projects where plantation wastes like fruit bunches are used to produce electricity,
"These investors from France, Ireland, the UK, Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong have approached me. Some of these investors have at least RM40 million to RM50 million set aside (for biomass power plant projects) but the problem is, I don't have any projects to show them," Biomass-SP technical adviser Datuk Leong Kin Mun told Business Times in an interview recently.
The appeal of renewable energy plants is well documented. The plants are friendlier to the environment and a lot cheaper to run over the long term as their fuel, unlike natural gas or coal, are virtually free. Owners can get such plants certified as good for the environment and sell the papers, known as carbon credits, on a climate exchange.
Leong said most of the investors were from the EU and very keen on funding anaerobic-digeston projects, where gas from fermented wastes is trapped and used as fuel, and could invest about RM3 million to RM4 million per venture.
But the industry has not heard about Biomass-SP. Malaysian Palm Oil Council chief executive officer Tan Sri Yusof Basiron believed that many palm oil millers would be interested to partner these green investors but believed that many are not in the know about their existence.
"We are definitely looking for opportunities. Everyone has money. We are looking for opportunities with or without banks' support. So my advice to them is to do their homework and spread the word around," he added.
But Leong said businessmen in Malaysia, especially those who own palm oil mills, have low-risk appetite when it comes to investing in biogas projects as they are afraid that the investment will disrupt the day-to-day running of their palm oil plantation, while the rest is not interested.
"Unless the government comes up with some sort of policy, I am afraid that the biogas project would remain an unpopular venture among the palm oil millers," he said.
Renewable energy is in line with the country's overall policy to reduce dependence on fossil fuel and increase the use of renewable resources in its energy-generation capacity to 2,000 megawatts (MW) in 2020.
Leong said the palm oil industry, being the country's major plantation crop with a total of 417 palm oil mills and plantations, covering 4 million hectares of land, holds the key role to meeting such objective.
Apart from generating electricity from solid wastes like empty fruit bunches and palm kernel shell, power generation can also be achieved through the capture of palm oil mill effluent (POME) biogas.
"Based on fresh fruit bunch yield in 2009, an estimated 57.42 million tonnes (1607.76 million m3) of POME are produced annually. In terms of total power generation capacity, this translates into potential power output capacity of 261.1 megawatts.
"At the current rate of 21sen/ kWh Tenaga Nasional (Bhd) is buying renewable energy, the potential of electricity sales is worth RM394.8 million. Upon implementation of the feed-in tariff system, the higher renewable energy purchase price could be an added incentive for palm oil millers to convert their POME biogas to electricity," he added.
VERBIO Vereinigte Bioenergie AG’s biogas plant in Zörbig, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, is now feeding into MITGAS Netz’ high pressure gas grid. Looking at biogas in Central Europe.
Note: Video and article are not associated.
Biogas could be an important part of EU’s 2020 targets for renewable energy, and the EU project Sustainable and Innovative European Biogas Environment (SEBE) is now looking at technology and regulatory frameworks for biogas. Europe adopts report on biomass sustainability
The European Commission has adopted a report on sustainability requirements for the use of solid biomass and biogas in electricity, heating and cooling, concluding that more detailed legislation is not necessary at this stage. Growth in biogas predicted in Germany
About 760 biogas plants were connected to the German national electricity grid in 2009 - three times the number in 2007 - according to estimates by the German Biogas Association. This is around 100 times more than exist in the UK. Introduction to feed-in tariffs
The feed-in tariff is often held up as a ‘must’ for renewable energy to succeed. David Jacobs explores feed-in tariffs in all shapes and forms, and illustrates what should be taken into consideration when designing them.
11 February 2011
Conergy AG, based in Hamburg, Germany, announces that it has sold its biogas subsidy EUPRON to RES Projects, specialists in biomethane installation.
With this sale RES Projects will acquire a number of biogas ventures at different developmental levels amounting to more than 23 MW of energy being generated from biogas activities.
These new biogas projects are to be installed in the next few years and will be mainly located in Germany.
The government has pledged to encourage farmers to invest in anaerobic digestion projects, it has been revealed.
Junior DEFRA minister Lord Henley said he was in talks with the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to help improve Feed-in Tariff rates which are rewarded to those who set up renewable energy programmes.
Speaking at the Northern Farming Conference today (October 15th), he said: "We want to do what we can. That obviously will in due course with DECC mean looking at feed-in tariffs and a whole range of other things.
"We have given a commitment that we will encourage anaerobic digestion."
Lord Henley also claimed the technology can offer farmers a wide range of benefits other than energy production.
In addition to reducing the amount of waste which is sent to the landfill, the bi-product of the anaerobic digestion process can be used as a fertiliser for crops.
Typical Guttridge equipment used in the anaerobic digestion industry includes; elevators – bucket elevators – valves
James Smith
