New Zealand’s Solid Energy to construct new wood pellet plant in Taupo

In New Zealand, Solid Energy, the state-owned coal mining concern, will expand its renewables capacity with a new biomass facility in Taupo that will ultimately generate 150,000 tonnes per year of wood pellet fuel. The plant is scheduled to be operational in 2009, with initial capacity of 60,000 tonnes per year. The company has current capacity of 60,000 tonnes at its plants in Rotarua and Rolleston.

Last August, a Solid Energy subsidiary, Biodiesel New Zealand, said that it is testing canola production in the South Island to produce lower cost feedstocks for a proposed 6 Mgy biodiesel processing plant.

Biodiesel New Zealand, now 90 percent owned by Solid Energy, the state-owned coal mining concern, is expanding its production from its original feedstock of restaurant and food processor grease. Solid Energy announced plans to increase production capacity as much as 4000 percent, but a 90 percent increase in canola prices has affected its plans.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark has committed the government to use B10 blends or electric power for 80 percent of its fleet by 2015, and the country has a 3.4 percent biofuel mandate target for 2012.

In August, a 10 percent ethanol blend went on sale in New Zealand, prompting strong public support from the Green Party while the Director of New Zealand’s Advanced Energy and Material Systems Lab called biofuels a “waste of time and money”.

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