The biggest green energy plant of its kind in the UK is being built in Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond announced yesterday amid warnings soaring gas prices could push household gas and electricity bills to £1000 a year.
The biggest green energy plant of its kind in the UK is being built in Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond announced yesterday amid warnings soaring gas prices could push household gas and electricity bills to £1000 a year.
Using discarded wooden furniture destined for landfill and virgin timber from trees for fuel, the £100m-plus biomass facility in Fife could produce enough electricity to power a city the size of Dundee.
The plant will generate adequate power to meet 6% of the Scottish Government's renewable energy targets, the first of which states that by 2011 - when the plant should be operational - 31% of the nation's electricity must be produced through renewables.
It will primarily be used to power the Tullis Russell papermill at Markinch near Glenrothes where it will slash the firm's carbon footprint by around 70%, reducing carbon emissions from about 270,000 tonnes per year to about 20,000 tonnes annually. However, it is expected the firm will use less than half of the energy produced, with the remaining power sent to the national grid for use around the country.
The news came as an independent report commissioned by Centrica, which owns British Gas, warned that prices could increase by 70%. According to the report an annual domestic gas bill could top £1000 within the next few years.
Visiting the papermill yesterday to announce an £8.1m Scottish Government grant towards the plant, Mr Salmond said: "It is a substantial amount of power which will make a significant difference to our renewables targets. I've heard and read our targets are too ambitious and will be difficult to meet. Not only will we meet these targets but we will meet them early and exceed them by a significant margin."
The government's 2011 target will be followed by a tougher target of ensuring that, by 2020, 50% of Scotland's electricity comes from renewable sources. The plant is being built by energy firm Npower, which will provide the remainder of the funding. Construction will create up to 300 jobs at its peak, and safeguard work for the 540 staff at the mill.
Yesterday's announcement comes several years after Tullis Russell proposed a biomass plant to cut its rising gas bills but hit a "myriad" regulatory problems.
Chief executive Chris Parr said: "Biomass will take us away from dependence on traditional energy sources, particularly gas and the issues of price and supply. We will be a genuinely low carbon producer, which is hugely important."
Head of Npower's combined heat and power division, Phil Piddington, added: "This will deliver huge savings for Scotland in terms of carbon emissions."
As well as being more environmentally friendly than the coal-fired plant it is replacing, the combined heat and power plant will be more efficient because heat created by generating power is also put to use instead of being wasted.
Green groups welcomed the announcement which Greenpeace said put the Scottish Government streets ahead of its UK counterpart.
Greenpeace chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said: "This is exactly the kind of project that's needed to tackle climate change and increase our energy security."
Earlier this month a consortium led by ScottishPower made the UK Government's shortlist for a competition to develop Britain's first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage project, under which carbon dioxide produced by a coal power station will be buried beneath the seabed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
