Energy and environment focus on Biomass: Helius Energy

Biomass energy, the generation of power from waste wood, has been given impetus over the past few years due to the need for mitigation strategies for climate change. But the technology has long been proven, says John Seed, managing director of Helius Ener

“Every year, 10 million tons of wood goes into landfill sites,” he says. “People are paying money to put wood into landfill whereas it would be much better put into biomass projects.”

Helius, based in Grimsby and London, was set up in 2007 with the objective of building, owning and operating biomass energy generating plants.

“Our focus,” says Mr Seed, “is on proven technology, using readily available fuel in the form of forestry by-products and waste wood, working hard to mitigate risk and making it attractive to investment.”

Mr Seed says it takes between two and a half and three years on average to develop and build a biomass plant and up to another one and a half years to connect it to the grid.

“That’s pretty similar to other renewable technology projects,” he says. “The key is having lots of experience. I have worked in the biomass industry for more than 15 years and we have 20 staff, who have an average of more than 15 years experience in the business.”

Helius is developing a 65MW biomass generation plant in Stallingborough, near Grimsby, which it has pre-sold to German utility group RWE, though it will continue to take a share of profits for the next 24 years.

RWE will invest £240m in developing the new plant but Helius will be directly involved in the construction, implementation and start-up phases.

“It is going to burn old pallets, garden waste, branches, wood offcuts, sawdust and processed timber and will get through 300,000 tons a year,” says Mr Seed, who believes that biomass projects also help improve the sustainability of forestry sites by cutting waste and improving efficiency.

“Biomass is a very well-proven technology,” he says. “The reason it has not been widely adopted in the UK is that the support network for it has not been there for it but the technology is widely available and so is the waste wood.”

Indeed, Mr Seed believes there is already UK demand for biomass energy is already 2,000MW and that biomass could supply as much as 50pc of the world’s primary energy needs by 2050.

In addition to Stallingborough, Helius, which floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2007, is planning a 100MW biomass power plant at Avonmouth on the Bristol Channel.

It also has smaller 5MW-8MW projects that are designed to be where sustainable and renewable feedstocks to burn in the plant are readily available from sites such as breweries and distilleries.

Such a project is planned near a distillery in Rothes, in Moray, Scotland, but Mr Seed also believes that much larger sites than Avonmouth are also viable.

“There’s huge potential,” he says. “Finland has 300MW biomass plants. There are some very big projects.”