World’s largest coal-to-biomass power station conversion nears completion

Argus Media reports the biomass conversion of Germany utility RWE’s Tilbury, UK, power plant is on schedule to be completed before the end of this year, possibly as soon as November. The conversion is relatively straightforward, with the main issues material handling and logistics, according to RWE.

The coal-fired power station on the banks of the Thames in England, previously scheduled for shut down in 2015 under new EU environmental regulations, hopes to produce up to 750 megawatts of green power. The news comes a day after a leaked European roadmap for energy use showed the use of coal for power generation dropping dramatically and that within 20 years all homes on the continent could be powered by wind-generated electricity.

Argus Media quotes an RWE spokesperson: “We are still learning about biomass, as this is a first-of-a-kind project on this scale.”

A European Commission report on green energy leaked on Monday says all scenarios point to wind farms becoming the biggest source of electricity in the bloc by 2050, outstripping both coal and nuclear power. By 2030 all of Europe’s 240 million households could be wind-powered but if enewable sources of power, such as wind and solar, make up a large share of energy production average prices for households could jump by more than 100% by 2050.

Image of the Tilbury power station in 1973 reproduced under the Creative Commons licence. Tilbury ‘A’ station was commissioned in 1956 and Tilbury ‘B’ was opened in 1968 and assigned to Britain’s National Power on privatisation in 1990.

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