Balfour Beatty Investments consortium reaches financial close on UK biomass plant

Balfour Beatty Investments has reached financial close on a £51.6 million (€72 million) advanced conversion technology waste wood power station located in Northamptonshire, UK. Balfour Beatty will invest £17.2 million, as will each of its two consortium investment partners, Noy Infrastructure & Energy Investment Fund and Equitix.

The 26 month construction programme will start in March 2015 and will be undertaken by MWH Treatment. Once complete, the project will convert 60,000 tonnes of dry waste wood feedstock, that is being supplied locally by Welland Waste Management, into 9MW of electricity using gasification technology from Nexterra Systems.

The clean electricity generated will be exported to the national grid and will be enough to power more than 17,000 UK households a year and, resulting in an annual saving of 28,809 tonnes of CO2 against a baseline assumption that the waste wood would otherwise be exported for energy recovery in Northern Europe.

Welland is Balfour Beatty's second project in the waste wood to energy market, the first being Birmingham Bio Power which reached financial close in 2013 and is currently in construction. Both Birmingham Bio Power and Welland have been jointly developed with the renewables developer Cogen.

Stewart Orrell, MD of economic infrastructure for Balfour Beatty Investments, says: 'This biomass project is our second investment into the renewable energy sector and is one of a pipeline of similar opportunities that we are exploring together with Nexterra. We are excited to be working with our partners to help create sustainable, clean and safe energy solutions in the UK and to bring economic benefit the local communities around our projects.'

 

SOURCE: Balfour Beatty Investments