Constellation, a subsidiary of Exelon Corp., and LA Sanitation have begun the construction of a 25MW biogas-fueled cogeneration plant. The facility will supply 100% of the steam and electricity produced to power LA Sanitation’s Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in Los Angeles, US. Commercial operation of the Hyperion cogeneration plant is scheduled for the end... [Read More]

The city of Toyohashi in the Aichi Prefecture, Japan, is planning to set up a combined biomass power generation facility. The Toyohashi plant, projected to be finished in 2017, will base its operations on collecting biodegradable waste from the city’s population of 380,000. To fund the scheme, Toyohashi Municipal Government is reaching out to private finance initiatives. ‘This... [Read More]

Aalborg Energie Technik, a Danish biomass engineering company, has received an order for the conversion of Østkraft's 20-year-old boiler plant to combust biomass instead of coal. The conversion and rebuilding with installation and commissioning will take place from July to September 2016. After the conversion the plant will be capable of firing any combination of... [Read More]

MPC Capital, a German investment company, is set to construct an 18MW biomass power plant in Brazil. The plant, which will be fed by rice husk, will be built in the city of Itaqui, Rio Grande do Sul state. Building is projected to start in 2016 with an investment of BRL208 million (€51.2m). The Itaqui plant, with an annual processing capacity of 140,000 tonnes of... [Read More]

Monsanto and Novozymes have announced a new acreage target for 2025 that will guide the companies’ microbials business for the next decade. The two partners in The BioAg Alliance are develop new microbial solutions for global agriculture and project that their products will be used on 250-500 million acres globally by 2025, equivalent to 25-50% of all US farmland. Currently... [Read More]

When upgrading one of Europe’s largest sewers, which currently serves 3.5 million people, increasing its capacity by 60%, and taking into account a predicted population increase of 10% by 2021, it is understandable why such a system is regarded as a ‘super sewer’. These are the scale of the upgrades being undertaken by Thames Water at their Beckton and... [Read More]

HSBC has pledged to commit $1 billion (€937m) to a green bond portfolio which will invest in high quality liquid assets in the form of green, social, or sustainability bonds. These bonds will be aligned with the Green Bond Principles and will be used to fund projects in sectors such as clean transportation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate change adaption,... [Read More]

Agraferm Technologies, a German manufacturer of biogas, biomethane, and waste recycling plants, is expanding its internationalisation strategy to the Asian market. The company has chosen Seoul, South Korea, as the location for the subsidiary AF Biogas, which is currently in the process of being founded and will enter operation later in 2015. Environmentally friendly manure... [Read More]

Babcock & Wilcox Vølund, a Danish thermal energy producer, has ordered a state-of-the-art biomass handling system from Saxlund, part of the Swedish Opcon Group. The system will be delivered to Babcock & Wilcox Vølund’s (BWV) Templeborough Biomass Power Plant in Sheffield, UK. The scope of the order is the design, manufacturing, delivery, and... [Read More]

The operators of a UK combined heat and power (CHP) biogas plant report they have manage to reduce the plant’s power consumption by half. The Agrigen-Siemens plant in Suffolk has been fitted with Siemens automation technology, including a controller, distributed I/O, and visualisation software. The plant’s height, pressure, and temperature measurements are... [Read More]

Hamrick Engineering, a US-based start-up, has received a broad patent for extracting sugars and nanocellulose from lignocellulosic biomass by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This new technology uses an environmentally benign technique of vacuum infusion of hydrolysis catalysts into biomass. ‘This ground-breaking patent describes how to extract sugars... [Read More]

An anaerobic digestion (AD) facility built in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire, UK, has been hit with a four-month delay in becoming fully operational. The hold-up could add several millions of pounds to the commissioning budget at the plant that has already had £750 million (€1.06bln) invested to it. Shanks, the UK waste-to-product company responsible for running... [Read More]

Operations have started at Hitachi Zosen Corp.'s 3 billion yen (€22.7 million) Miyanosato biomass-fired power plant in Hitachiota City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Hitachi Zosen has been building the plant, with a power output of 5,750kW, since 2013. The new facility will process waste wood, a material that is abundantly available in Ibaraki due to the large forestry... [Read More]

Plymouth University is working with New Generation Biogas, a Devon, UK, company, to hone the design of its anaerobic digestion (AD) system. By giving New Generation Biogas (NGB) access to its facilities and expertise, Plymouth University (PU) has helped the Totnes-based firm observe the microbes that transform waste close-up and understand what makes them thrive. NGB used... [Read More]

Veolia, through its subsidiary Veolia Japan, has been awarded two contracts to operate two biomass-fired power plants in northern Japan, in partnership with local environmental services company Takeei. These two contracts, both of which have been signed for 20 years, represent total revenue of €90 million for Veolia. The facilities, which are located in the cities... [Read More]

Weltec Biopower, a German bioenergy producer, and Aquatec Maxcon are building a 1MW anaerobic digestion (AD) biogas plant in Melbourne, Australia. Construction of the plant, first of its kind in Australia, began in October and will be finished by the end of 2016. The plant was ordered by water supply and sewage services company Yarra Valley Water, which with the construction... [Read More]