This biomass plant, which is the first to be financed by the EIB under the European Investment Plan, will be capable of generating 324 GWh of electricity per year from forest waste collected within a radius of 100 kilometres around the new facility.
The EIB financing, together with another €50 million ($58.5 million) loan from various financial institutions, will be provided via a Project Finance arrangement for the construction and operation of this new facility, which will have a capacity of around 50 MW.
To generate this energy, the plant will use about 500,000 tonnes of forest biomass a year. The project will therefore contribute to forest maintenance in the area and also to fire prevention, while encouraging the collection, for industrial use, of small wood waste that is normally discarded. The biomass used by the plant will be FSC or PEFC-certified.
The plant is expected to begin operations in 2020.
To date, 400 people have been employed for the construction of the plant, and once it is up and running, it is expected tp create 35 permanent jobs and approximately 100 additional indirect jobs in the waste supply chain.
The EIB is providing this loan under the Investment Plan for Europe, known as the “Juncker Plan”. This project is one of the first to be implemented under the new regulatory framework for the industry approved in Spain in 2013. Greenalia was the winning bidder in Spain’s first auction for new renewables-based power generation facilities in early 2016.
