The construction of a biomass power plant in Kruševac was announced by Building Energy from Italy and the City of Kruševac in central Serbia. First such project combining electric and thermal energy in the country will have an installed capacity of respectively 4.8 MW and 20 MW and will generate 38.4 GWh of electric power and 86 GWh of thermal power per year.
The development of the project, worth EUR 27 million, starts from a memorandum of understanding. The plant will be fuelled by woodchips from waste material from Serbian woods, according to Building Energy’s statement. Thermal energy operation is facilitated by a ten-year agreement with the local thermal power plant. The city has about 110,000 inhabitants. The sale of electric power will be regulated by a contract with the national utility EPS, according to the Serbian feed-in-tariff rules.
The project will create 70 jobs during the plant construction and 40 more positions for plant management and maintenance activities. In addition to these, other jobs will be created from satellite activities, such as the woods cleaning and the biomass transportation to the plant, the press release said.
Savings from emissions of carbon dioxide amount to 38,400 tons per year, achieved through both higher cycle efficiency and the reduction in the use of carbon as the energy source of the current teleheating, the company stated. The end of construction works and the beginning of electrical and thermal power production is expected for the winter of 2017/18.
Building Energy has been present in the Balkans market since 2014 with its offices in Belgrade, from which it manages and coordinates the development of its projects in Serbia, Croatia, The Republic of Srpska, Romania, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia. „We are happy to develop, with the support of the City of Kruševac, the country’s biggest plant combining electrical and thermal power in the renewables sector,” said Paolo Rossi, managing director for Eastern Europe. „The high availability of woodchip biomass in Serbia, together with our know-how and experience in the use of diversified technology will allow to begin a modernization process, by substituting the current thermal power plants, fuelled by fossil fuel, contributing to align the country to the European standard of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Building Energy is a multinational company operating as global integrated IPP in the renewable energy industry on four continents, the statement adds. The company is vertically integrated on the value chain, from the development of projects to the sale of energy. The company said it has over 2.9 GW and generative assets being built over the next two years for more than 500 MW (the near notice to proceed and backlog projects) in the pipeline.
