Helius Energy: Importing biomass necessary to keep costs down
Tuesday 02 March 2010
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| Helius chief executive Dr Adrian Bowles said importing biomass lowered costs |
The chief executive of biomass-to-energy company Helius Energy has defended the sourcing of material from overseas, provided the biomass is sustainable.
Speaking to NewEnergyFocus.com following the publication of Helius Energy's financial results for 2009 (see this NewEnergyFocus.com story), chief executive of the company, Dr Adrian Bowles, and chief financial officer, Alan Lyons, claimed it was necessary to import some biomass in order to keep costs and risks down.
Dr Bowles said: "There is an enormous amount of unsustainable biomass in the world, but equally there is an awful lot of sustainable biomass. The most important thing is that we tap into the sustainable source.
"I don't see importation of material as a risk or anything particularly controversial in fact."
Adding to this, Mr Lyons said: "A significant amount of indigenous biomass available in the UK market but you must take advantage of every biomass opportunity to reduce risks and costs."
These comments came after the non-executive director of Helius, John Seed - who sits on the Renewables Advisory Board (RAB) - claimed that around 53% of biomass in 2020 would be imported or energy crops, raising doubts about long-term sustainability (see this NewEnergyFocus.com story).
Imports
On the issue of sustainability and importation of biomass feedstocks, energy minister David Kidney responded to a Parliamentary question from current chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, Labour MP for Sherwood, Paddy Tipping, last week (February 23) about what estimates have been made of the amount of biomass needed to fuel proposed new wood-burning power stations and what proportion of it is expected to from UK sources.
In response, Mr Kidney said: "The combined total of consented and in planning biomass applications for England and Wales, of plants over 50MW, is 2,138 MWe potentially using up to 17.33 million tonnes of biomass per annum.
I don't see importation of material as a risk or anything particularly controversial
"Robust biomass supply chains are only now becoming established across the UK and biomass fuels are increasingly traded as a global commodity.
"Therefore, we expect, in the short term at least, that these plants will use a significant volume of imported biomass, together with wood fuel sourced from managed UK forests and woodlands and from other sources."
Industry
Dr Bowles of Helius claimed that there are a lot of prospects for the biomass industry going forward, provided it gets enough support from government.
He said: "What we see moving forward is increasing support for this type of project - the future is very encouraging for this."
And, commenting on the benefits of biomass, he said: "Biomass is very likely to make a large contribution to the 2020 renewable energy targets.
"The strong plus point it has is that when you turn your switch on, the power is there, whereas some other renewable technologies are less reliable - such as wind. When the wind doesn't blow, it doesn't blow."
In terms of finance, which has often been quoted as a major barrier to the anaerobic digestion and biomass industry (see this NewEnergyFocus.com story), Helius claims it is simply an issue for every industry in the wake of the financial crisis.
Dr Bowles said: "Finance isn't a major obstacle, it is a challenge one has to get round.
"The finance market at the moment is challenging for any project, that is all renewables, so any funding is difficult to come by."
Mr Lyons added: "Finance is a problem for ill constructed projects but we construct projects that are project manageable and therefore financeable."
Helius Energy primarily deals with securing sites, financing and construction of biomass plants, but Dr Bowles claimed the company would one day like to move on to operation and be able to deliver a complete project package.
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