Eesti Energia approves new CHP plant

RIGA  - Eesti Energia’s Supervisory Board on Jan. 28 gave approval to proceed on an agreement to build a waste-to-energy (WTE) combined heat and power (CHP) plant, reports news agency LETA. The cost of the new co-generation plant, to be constructed next to the Iru power plant on the outskirts of Tallinn, is expected to be about 1.5 billion kroons (96.1 million euros), with the plant planning to burn up to 220,000 tons of waste generated in Estonia every year.
Construction of the waste incineration plant will begin in the summer 2010, with the CHP plant planned to go online in early 2012. The tender process conducted in the summer of 2009 resulted in the selection of the French company Constructions Industrialles De La Mediterranee (CNM) as the contractor.

“Although the heating value of ordinary municipal waste is not comparable to that of oil shale, over 300,000 tons of waste suitable for energy use is deposited into Estonian landfills each year. To make use of this domestic resource, Eesti Energia is building its own mass waste incineration plant,” said Director of Eesti Energia Renewable Energy Ando Leppiman.

“Even after our WTE plant is built, 100,000 tons of waste will continue to be deposited in landfills in Estonia every year, and in the future an environmentally friendly way of recovering this share should be found as well. For instance, this waste could be directed to the several Estonian-based Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plants. Thus, we would at some point have the potential to catch up to Germany, where today only 1 percent of municipal waste is put in lands. Thermal energy capacity of the new CHP plant will be 50 MW with power generating capacity of 17 MW. This will complement the existing capacities at Iru power plant [of 648 MW of heat and 190 MW of electricity]. As waste is certainly a fuel of domestic origin, the future price of heat will undoubtedly be more stable and favorable than the current price offered to Tallinn and Maardu heating consumers,” added Leppiman.

The most common commercially used mass waste incineration equipment is considered an environmentally friendly technology, which can be used to transform about 85 percent of the energy contained in waste into electricity and heat. There are over 400 plants that employ this technology in Europe, and among Estonia’s neighbors it is most common in Finland, Sweden and Denmark.