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2008-09-19 Poland: Banking on Biogas

Some 2,500 plants are expected to be built in Poland by 2020 to generate electricity from waste under a government initiative entitled "Innovative Energy Generation-Energy Farming." The project involves two government ministries and four nongovernmental organizations, including the Renewable Energy Association.

"Using biomass in small efficient plants will enable us to achieve a total capacity of 3,000 MW," says Zbigniew Kamienski, director of the energy department at the Ministry of Economy.
Building 2,500 biogas plants to produce electricity from farming biomass is expensive, even with EU assistance. It will involve a total outlay of zl.35-40 billion. This is twice the cost, per unit of capacity, of building wind farms or conventional power plants.
But agriculture minister Marek Sawicki says the biogas plants will be a boon for rural development. The Renewable Energy Association has estimated that a third of Poland's idle land could be used to grow energy crops and that biogas plants have the potential to generate 80,000-100,000 jobs in rural areas.
Source: The Warsaw Voice, biodiesel.pl