'Green' biomass plant to ship in its chips from America

Energy bosses plan to buy in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wood from sustainable forests abroad to provide material for the plant at Imperial Dock near Ocean Terminal.

Green groups say the revelation means the plant cannot claim to be environmentally friendly due to the carbon emissions involved in shipping the material thousands of miles.

It is just one of a number of controversies surrounding the 360 million development, which developer Forth Energy states will have the ability to produce enough electricity to meet the "majority" of Edinburgh's needs.

Due for completion in late 2014 or early 2015 if it wins the approval of the Scottish Government, the plant is expected to support 150 construction jobs as well as 40 operational posts when up and running.

There is local concern about the scale of the development though, which will involve demolition of a B-listed grain silo and the erection of a smoke stack up to 100 metres high which will be visible from across the city.

Local campaigners claim the plans amount to a tearing up of the masterplan for the area, with the plant earmarked for a site originally intended to be a park which is within 400 metres of existing housing developments.

It is the use of timber from Scandinavia and north America which has upset environmental groups due to the pollution caused by shipping and the impact on the world's forests. Timber which is turned into wood chip before being transported is sourced from overseas because Scotland does not currently have enough sustainable forests to meet the demand.

Robin Harper, Green MSP for the Lothians, said: "Under no circumstances should we be importing woodchip into Scotland when we could be growing our own instead.

"If Forth Energy were serious about doing this properly they would be coordinating with the Forestry Commission and Scottish companies and making long-term agreements for fuel supply.

"A proper biomass plant could be extremely good for the area, especially if it was designed to provide both heat and power to local housing developments.

"It makes sense for Edinburgh and Leith to generate more power close to where it's needed, but this is really not the right approach."

A United Nations report from 2008 calculated that annual emissions from shipping had reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO2 a year – 4.5 per cent of all global emissions.

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said the plans fell "well short" of what environmentalists had hoped for."The idea of using biomass from a sustainable source is something we support," he said. "But shipping is a fairly major contributor to climate change. Our biggest concern, however, is not shipping but the overall impact plants like this have when sourcing biomass from other countries.

"The developers have to be challenged to source their wood chip sustainably. I think this plant is highly commercially viable but far from the most sustainable form of renewable energy."

According to Forth Energy, the biomass plant would generate up to 200 megawatts of electricity for the local network and provide heat for local homes from the use of around 1.3 million tonnes per year of biomass fuel.

While the majority of that fuel is expected to be wood chip, up to 30 per cent will be drawn from purpose-grown energy crops, agricultural residues and recovered biomass materials, such as paper and cardboard.

Alastair Tibbitt, development manager at local campaign group Greener Leith, said his group believed that could mean up to 50 trucks a day heading for the plant. He said: "This development is so big that it will, in effect, be another 'bad neighbour' development.

"It's pretty clear to us that the original plan for the area has been thrown out of the window."

However, Mr Tibbitt said his group backed plans for a biomass plant in principal, adding that such a development had the potential to add an "element of dynamism" to the area if done properly.

Calum Wilson, the managing director of Forth Energy, said: "I believe the port location is the right place and bringing the fuel in by sea is the right model. The largest percentage will be imported biomass. It could be imported from areas such as north America or from Scandinavia from sustainably managed forests."

Mr Wilson also said the decision on where to site the Leith plant had been taken "within the last few weeks", and he maintained that the complex would not put off residential developers in future.