New plant to be powered by trash

TALLINN - The council of Eesti Energia approved in December the construction of an electric and heating co-production power plant that will use waste as its input material. The plant is expected to be operational by the beginning of 2012, and will be located next to the current Iru electricity power station, reports news agency LETA.

The Eesti Energia council ordered the company’s board to prepare a construction contract. The cost of the new electricity and heating co-generation station will be around 1.5 billion kroons (96.1 million euros). The plant, on the edge of Tallinn, will burn up to 220,000 tons of waste per year. It will accept both household daily garbage and industrial and construction waste.
“The fact is that today, nearly 500,000 tons of daily trash is created in Estonia and only a third of it is sorted and recycled, while the rest is piled at dumpsters,” said Eesti Energia renewable energy company director Ando Leppiman.
In the summer of 2009, Eesti Energia selected French company Constructions Industrialles De La Mediterranee (CNIM) to build the station.

Once up and running, the new plant will have heating production capacity of 50 MW and electricity production capacity of 17 MW, and will supplement capacity at the Iru power plant, with 648 MW of heating and 190 MW of electricity.