Coal, Biomass Seek More Equal Footing in Japan Power Generation

IHI Corp., a Japanese maker of heavy equipment, is promoting a method to increase the ratio of woody biomass that’s able to be burned at coal-fired power plants amid increasing pressure to curb the carbon dioxide emissions that result from power generation.

Some coal-fired plants are already mixing wood pellets and chips using mills intended to grind coal. In such co-firing, biomass typically accounts for less than 10 percent of the heat generated, with the remainder contributed by coal.

The push to use more biomass to generate electricity comes as an international agreement on climate change reached at the United Nation’s COP21 meeting last year in Paris encourages a shift to more clean energy.

IHI conducted a pilot project at a 149-megawatt coal-fired plant operated by Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. in the northern prefecture of Iwate allowing the generator to use wood pellets for as much as 25 percent. The ratio could feasibly be raised to more than 50 percent, according to a company statement.

Additional costs related to retrofitting mills can be recouped in “several years” for power producers who sell biomass power under Japan’s incentive program for clean energy, said Shinobu Nakamura, deputy division director of the energy systems center for IHI. The program, which began in July 2012, buys electricity from renewable sources at higher rates to boost investments in clean energy.

Another company is Nippon Paper Industries Co., it is among companies planning to mix woody biomass for its new coal-fired power plans under development.

“It is easier to run plants that only burn coal in terms of securing fuel and operating them, however, we began to recognize we can no longer stick to coal only,”

-Yoichi Horikawa, head of the Nippon Paper Industries Co. energy business division.

Resource: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-20/coal-biomass-seek-more-equal-footing-in-japan-power-generation