Other News

Renewable energy company Estover Energy's biomass-fired CHP plant has been granted planning consent. The £65 million (€76.5 million) plant, to be built at Discovery Park in Kent, was awarded consent by Dover District Council. It will generate renewable heat and power across the 220 acre site. It will also supply low carbon electricity to the national grid, supporting the UK's national…
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Cool Planet Energy Systems, a developer of small-scale biorefineries, has launched its biochar soil amendment product – Cool Terra – for commercial agricultural trials. The company has assembled a biochar research team to develop and produce high-performance biochar soil amendments designed for specific applications. Cool Planet says it plans to continue expanding application…
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Helsingin Energia has collaborated with the Finnish Environment Institute and Tampere University of Technology to study the changes in the environmental impacts of the Salmisaari power plant when coal is replaced with small amounts of wood pellets. It was concluded in the study that mixed combustion of wood pellets reduces the climate impacts of the power plant. However, the change in the impacts…
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Texas-based renewables company EM Biogas is selling its Huckabay Ridge anaerobic digestion plant. The $26 million (€19 million) plant was erected in 2007. Comprising eight digesters with a capacity to handle 7.5 million gallons of digestate, the plant is one of the largest AD facilities in North America. The sale also includes around 72.5 acres of land, property improvements and…
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Greenleaf Power, an owner and operator of green energy plants, has completed the acquisition of the Saint-Félicien cogeneration power plant in Quebec, Canada. This is the first plant Greenleaf has purchased outside of the US; it currently owns and operates biomass facilities in San Joaquin, Humboldt, Lassen and Riverside counties. Its latest project has the capacity to generate around 21MW…
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RWE Innogy's biopower plant in Georgia, US has recently been certified under the European Pellet Council's ENplus A1. The new certification provides assurance to buyers in Europe that the pellets meet strict quality criteria. The company exports to European countries such as Italy, Germany and Denmark. The pellet production facility manufactures 750,000 tonnes of pellets and is operated by…
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Brazilian biopower company Energias Renovaveis do Brasil (ERB) is to partner with Dow Chemical for the construction of a renewable electricity facility in Minas Gerais state. According to reports from Bloomberg, the two companies have agreed to build a 237 million real (€80 million) biopower plant at the site of Dow Chemical's ethanol production facility. It will use sugarcane waste to…
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A commercial-scale renewable power plant has opened in Junction City in the US state of Oregon. The project, known as JC-Biomethane, has been labelled 'the Pacific Northwest's first commercial food waste-to-electricity' facility. Essential Consulting of Oregon designed and will also manage the plant, which will convert large volumes of food waste and other biomass materials into biogas for the…
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Leidos Holdings, a science and technology company, is to assume ownership of a 37.5MW biomass-fuelled power plant currently being built in Plainfield, Connecticut by Leidos Constructors. The new facility is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. Upon entering operations the biopower plant will power the equivalent of 37,000 homes. Connecticut Light & Power has signed a 15-year…
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According to a new survey published by WRAP, anaerobic digestion (AD) is driving forward to UK organics recycling industry. The study – ASORI – shows the number of operational AD sites grew during 2012 and the total input of organic waste processed via AD rose to 1.69 million tonnes last year. WRAP said over 50% of those sites surveyed have come online since the last survey was…
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VTT Technological Research Centre of Finland is organising a new European project to study the anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic waste. The AD process can be optimised to produce either biogas or volatile fatty acids that are even more valuable products than biogas. The produced volatile fatty acids can be converted further to raw materials with which it is possible to produce oil-replacing…
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Clean Energy Fuels, one of North America's largest providers of natural gas for transportation, is ready to begin distributing commercial volumes of its renewable natural gas vehicle fuel at 35 public Clean Energy stations throughout California. The company's fuel – Redeem – is made from waste materials collected from landfill, diary and sewage plants and today already powers…
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Utility company Kentucky Power Co. is to acquire biomass-based power from a renewable production plant near Hazard after the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a 20-year power purchase agreement. Under the recently approved agreement, Kentucky will buy renewable electricity from the 58.8MW ecoPower Generation-Hazard biomass plant, construction on which will take about two…
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The cause of a fire which broke out at the UK's Port of Tyne on 11 October is under investigation. Around 50 fire fighters responded to the incident, which originated inside a wood pellet storage facility at around 3pm. The port's operations were not disrupted and the property sustained minimal damage, according to reports. An external conveyor transfer tower will need to undergo some repair…
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