Swedish power utility Vattenfall has announced that its board has approved a plan to convert the company’s power plant facilities in Denmark to use large quantities of biomass fuel instead of coal.
The plan, which Vattenfall’s engineers have decided to call MaxBio, will replace up to 724,000 tons of coal per year, starting in 2018. As a result, it will prevent at least 1.5 million tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere, corresponding to a 27% decrease.
The company believes that MaxBio will make contribution to Vattenfall’s goal of making its energy production in the Nordic region carbon-neutral by 2030.
According to the company, in the Nordic region alone, it will invest more than 60 billion Danish crowns until the year 2016 in order to achieve this goal. The new MaxBio plan comprises investments in excess of 5 billion Danish crowns.
The power utility said that, replacing coal with biomass is a quick and effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Once its biomass program implemented, all units at the company’s three Danish heat plants: Amagerverket, Fynsverket and Nordjyllandsverket, will be biomass-fueled, said the company.
Hans von Uthmann, Vattenfall’s vice president and head of Vattenfall Norden, said: “Our goal is to turn electricity into a clean product that customers can consume with a good conscience, given the concerns that they have about global warming.
