Sheffield grants permission to ‘green’ powerplant

Energy supplier E.ON has received approval from Sheffield City Council to build a biomass power station in the city at Blackburn Meadows.

Construction on the site, formerly home to a coal-fired power plant, could begin as early as next year, with power being produced by 2011.

The £60 million power station will produce 25MW of electricity, enough to power 40,000 homes.

It will be powered using recycled wood, displacing around 80,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year – the same as taking 20,000 cars off the road.

Around 180,000 tonnes of locally sourced waste wood will be needed every year to power the station.

Dave Rogers, E.ON’s regional director for climate and renewables, said he was ‘delighted’ that his company had been given to go ahead to build the plant.

He added: ‘Biomass power stations offer us an exciting opportunity to help combat climate change by using carbon neutral products in the place of traditional fossil fuels to generate electricity.’

This will be E.ON’s second biomass power plant in the UK – the first was opened near Lockerbie, Scotland last year, providing 44MW of energy.

The company has ambitions plans to cut its carbon-per-kilowatt 10% by 2012, and will spend £1 billion on new renewable energy sites in the next five years, including wind turbines, biomass and tidal power