It was good to read that Bristol isn’t letting the setback of losing out in the European Green Capital Awards halt further green plans for the city. A story on the BBC website yesterday featured Cllr Alan Bailey, chair of Environmental Technology and Services Sector, who said nine different green energy projects were proposed in and around Avonmouth to be funded by the commercial sector to a tune of £2billion!
Great news for Bristolians, this may well help Bristol lead the rest of the country in becoming greener. There are already 3 wind turbines at Avonmouth owned and operated by Ecotricity and Bristol City Coucil are proposing another 2 turbines which will provide enough power for over 2,000 homes and prevent the emission of 8,000 tonnes of CO2.
Though scanning the council website does not reveal any further information on the proposed 9 projects mentioned by Cllr. Bailey. I have made an enquiry to discover the other proposed projects and will post again when I receive further information.
Bristol is already working on Biomass Heating Systems and has installed these on 2 sites already, neither are in the Avonmouth area. Other plans include installing solar energy devices on council housing stock and council buildings. Again, not confined to Avonmouth.
Currently also under proposal in the West Country Waste Strategy is a major ‘Recycling Center/Energy Recovery Center’ and Avonmouth is listed as being a site on all current proposals. You could possibly speculate that one of these green energy proposals could feasibly be some form of incinerator that can be classed by some as green as it recovers energy from waste….
….We’ll be watching how these plans progress!
Filed under: News Tagged: | Avonmouth, Bristol, Cllr Bailey, green energy, recylcle, waste, wind turbine
I requested information on the proposed 9 plans from Cllr Bailey by email, and have since received a reply giving some details.
Helius Energy are proposing a 100MW Biomass generator, on a 18 acre site located within Avonmouth Dock, subject to planning consent. Helius have a proven history of building Biomass Power Plants and state ‘sustainable feedstock’ as being a key element of their planning, though it is unclear where this ‘feedstock’ or fuel will be coming from. Though as part of their press release (13/10/08) they do state that it is a quayside site and support from the Port Authority has been obtained – so where is this feedstock going to be shipped from?
An article in the Bristol Evening Post from January 14th 2009, states “More than 90 per cent of all these fuels would come in by sea – mainly from North America or northern Europe.”. Well at least it won’t be coming by road, but from the other side of the Ocean?
Another Biomass power plant was actually announced last August by E-on, the electricity company. This will be on the Portbury Dock and again fuel would arrive by ship, though again no mention of where the source of the fuel will be.at 150mw this will be the countries largest Biomass Power Plant. E-on have secured the land and are in the planning process with construction expected to begin in 2010.
Local producers of Biomass should see good prices as the 2 compete for local fuel supplies, though having to ship it to the plants by boat may be a small handicap to those with these ambitions.
It was also mentioned in the reply that there were plans to install a ‘Heat Grid’ to provide the Avonmouth area with municipal heating, making use of the heat generated by the planned power plants and the existing Seabank Powerstation.
So, now lets add these up -
1) Wind Turbines
2) Helius Biomass Power Plant
3) E-on Biomass Power Plant
4) Heat Grid
Even if each turbine was counted and the heat grid was split into 3 projects(one for each power plant) this is still short of the previously mentioned 9 projects.
I have requested further information.
[...] was actually available at the time, so I wrote and published an optimistic post about this – Bristol Invests In Green Energy – with a promise to search a little harder for the missing projects and planned spendings as the [...]
Update – Actual figure for Green Energy Projects less than £1 billion! Further info in newer blog post – Bristol Green Energy Confusion