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Bouygues to build UK’s largest waste-to-energy plant

Bouygues Energies & Services has won a contract to build and operate the UK’s largest waste-to-energy gasification plant in the Hertfordshire town of Hoddesdon, 22 miles northeast of London. 

AssetGen Partners, a specialised investment fund, is the developer.

Bouygues Energies & Services will design and build the 10 MWe facility, procure equipment, and run the plant for 10 years.

The contract, Bouygues said yesterday, is worth $122m (£82m).

The plant is forecast to generate 41.6 MW thermal, which, once converted through a steam turbine generator, will deliver 10 MWe. 

Consuming around 90,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial waste, the plant will supply 76,000 MWh to the grid, enough to power around 7,000 homes.

AssetGen Partners said the plant should provide an example for elsewhere in the UK because it produces green energy and diverts waste from landfill.

"Taking a long-term and multi-functional approach has never been done at this scale before, and we hope that this will provide a blueprint for similar projects in the future across the UK," the firm’s managing director, Mark Denham, told the journal of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management.

UK state-funded Green Investment Bank (GIB), through its fund manager, Foresight, is investing $44.8m (£30m) in the plant, via a combination of shareholder loans and equity. Co-investors NOY and P3P are putting in approximate $30m and $15m, respectively.

Bouygues said the plant would use technology developed by Biomass Power Limited. 

Work starts in July 2015, with handover scheduled for 2017. Seventeen people will be needed to run the plant, Bouygues said.

Image: Municipalities around the world struggle with landfill. This new plant will consume around 90,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial waste and power around 7,000 homes (Source: stlouiscountymn.gov)

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