Subsidy squeeze closes Tilbury biomass
13 Aug 2013
The UK’s first ever coal plant to convert to biomass ceased generating electricity today after the government told its owners the plant would be ineligible for future support payments.
RWE npower was forced to shut down its 750MW Tilbury biomass plant today under the EU’s Large Combustion Plant (LCPD) Directive, which gave it 20,000 hours of operation from 1 January 2008. After over 40 years as a 1.5GW coal-fired plant, in 2011 Tilbury commenced generation on 100% biomass – a world first - for the remainder of its LCPD hours. These hours were due to end at 12:00, Tuesday 13 August.
Last month RWE npower announced it had given up on plans to upgrade the plant to keep it operating within the emissions limits of the LCPD. The firm said these plans were economically unviable under the plant’s current financial support level of one Renewable Obligation (RO) certificate per MWh.
The Government supports coal to biomass conversions
DECC spokesman
Despite this announcement the firm continued to pursue the possibility of upgrading the project by securing payments under the Contract for Difference (CfD) feed-in tariff (FIT), which the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has said will support biomass plants converted from old coal-fired power stations when it replaces the RO in 2017.
However, today RWE npower announced that DECC had said that despite its support of coal-plant conversions, Tilbury was ineligible for the CfD subsidy because it had already received support under the RO.
A DECC spokesman said: “This is a commercial decision by RWE. We regret that, in this case, the economics of the project meant that RWE felt unable to take it forward. The Government supports coal to biomass conversions as a cost-effective contribution to meeting our energy and climate goals.”
