World’s largest biomass plant planned for Poland

A French energy company has claimed it will begin construction on the world’s largest biomass plant in Poland.

GDF Suez will build the plant with a capacity of 190 megawatts (MW) at a cost of €240 million.

GDF Suez intends to double its overall renewable capacity by 2013 to 25,000MW. Currently the company derives 20% of its production capacity from renewable energies.

The group has 695MW in biomass-fuelled power plant capacity mainly in the US and Brazil but plants are generally small units.

The Polish plant will burn wood and agri-fuels. Construction would avoid potential carbon dioxide emissions of 1.2 million tonnes a year.

The plant, which will be start operating at the end of 2012, will be located in south-eastern Poland.

Engineering company Foster Wheeler was awarded the contract to design and build a circulating fluidised bed (CFB) biomass boiler.

The plant will burn almost quarter of a million tonnes (222,000) of agri-fuels and 890,000 tonnes of wood each year.