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Home / Bioethanol / News Russia's Rostechnologii mulls building Urals biomass projectRenewable Energy Report Rostechnologii Corp, a Russian state-owned company focused on developing high-technology industry in the country, expects to build a new biofuel energy complex at its VSMPO AVISMA magnesium producer by 2011, Sergei Lozhkin, the head of Rusekoil engineering company, said September 25. The $160 million project, which is to handle mainly peat and municipal waste, provides for the construction of the first stage by 2011 to handle 500,000 mt/year of feedstock, Lozhkin said. Rusekoil is to carry out the engineering and construction work of the project and to manage the complex after it is commissioned, he said. The first stage includes a 50-MW power plant to supply VSMPO AVISMA with electricity and production of some 90,000-100,000 mt/year of biofuel, which will be supplied to local markets in northern part of the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals. At the second stage, the complex's capacities will be doubled by 2013, Lozhkin told Platts on the sidelines of an industry conference in Moscow organized by Creon. The investment into the project is expected to be recouped within five years, he said. Russian authorities support the project, which is a part of the national strategy to expand biofuel production by 2020, and will partly finance it, he said, declining to elaborate. Rostechnologii declined to comment. Rusekoil is developing a number of other projects for Rostechnologii, Lozhkin said. Another similar project to produce 50 MW of power, and some 100,000 mt/year of biofuel could be built in Sochi, with a site for a third such project is being under consideration now, he said. Though Russia is rich in energy resources, it also consumes large amounts of energy and aims to reduce its energy intensity - the relation between energy use and economic growth - 40% by 2020. The plan also calls for building about 30 plants to produce some 2 million mt/year of ethanol by 2020. Russia currently does not produce any commercial volumes of ethanol, an analyst with Russia's National Biofuel Association Pyotr Kiryushin said. Rostechnologii's plans are the latest biomass initiative to emerge in Russia. The Danish Energy Agency reported last month that it has signed an agreement to support a renewable heat project in Russia. The project involves rehabilitating the heating system in the Russian city of Priozersk, located 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of St. Petersburg, close to the Finnish border. Most of the current heat supply in the city comes from a 70-year-old combined heat and power plant that will be shut down and replaced with new and smaller boilers. The project covers two boiler facilities: a wood-chips boiler house and a combined biomass (wood-waste and bark) and gas boiler-house. During the winter, temperatures in Priozersk can fall below minus 20 degrees Celsius, and the citizens depend on a reliable heat supply of heat. "The new, modern boiler houses provide a much more stable, efficient and environmental friendly heat-supply that also reduces CO(sub)2 emissions," the Danish Energy Authority said. A small part of the CO(sub)2 reductions will come from retrofitting the heating network. Furthermore, the project entails replacing and installing heating sub-stations as well as the installation of new thermal windows in the buildings which receive heating from the boiler houses. As part of the agreement, Denmark will purchase CO(sub)2 credits from the project under the Joint Implementation mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. The project will reduce CO(sub)2 emissions by an estimated 446,000 tons through 2017 - equal to the annual emissions of 11.000 Danish households.
Date: 16.10.2008 Leave your comment
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