‘Green’ power plant planned

11:15am Wednesday 15th November 2006

A PIONEERING compost complex at Hurn could be home to one of the country's first green generators to recycle scrap wood into electricity and help reduce global warming.

Operators of the Eco Composting green waste facility are proposing to develop a "biomass" generator on their Chapel Lane site on the edge of the airport.

The biomass technique, burning wood chips in a smokeless process to power a turbine, was highlighted in the recent Stern report on global warming as having very substantial' potential in the fight against climate change.

Powered by waste wood, timber and furniture already being brought to the site for composting, along with willow grown and harvested on around 150 acres of adjoining farmland, the 2.25 megawatt biomass generator could be operational within three years to provide enough electricity for 5,000 homes in the area.

Eco technical manager Mike Thompson said: "No noise will reach neighbouring premises, no smell will be produced and there will be no harmful emissions."

Plans for the green power station which will be about the size of a small aircraft hangar and information about the biomass process will be on public show at Eco composting from today until Saturday.

Eco managing director Trelawney Dampney said: "Similar biomass plants have been operating in Europe for five years but there is only one plant currently operating in the UK, at Teesside. However, this will increase significantly as the pressure on fossil fuels escalate.

"The amount of wood being recycled is increasing all the time, so there is no danger of the raw material drying up.

"We don't want it to go into landfills, where it produces methane gas.

"This is much cleaner, more sustainable and in line with the way we all must go to reduce our impact on the environment.

"It looks like the way forward in the UK; we expect to see small plants like this appearing across the country over the next few years."