Technical specifications and sustainability criteria for the trade of solid biomass to power generation

摘要

The Initiative Wood Pellets Buyers (IWPB) is a working panel grouping the major European utilities firing wood pellets in large power plants: DONG Energy, Drax Power, E.ON, RWE-Essent, Vattenfall, and GDF SUEZ Electrabel. Since the development of large biomass firing units in the years 2000, including the full conversion of pulverised coal units to wood pellets, trading wood pellets between utilities has became a key issue. Every large biomass power plant must rely on long-term off take contracts or even upstream integration of wood pellets sourcing. But, when one of this power plant must be shut down for a while due to technical failure, then deliveries of wood pellets to the plant will continue and, to keep storage costs under control, it is then essential to be able to re-trade the pellets to other large customers, being other utilities. IWPB was born in June 2010 after the statement had been made in early 2010 that trading of wood pellets between two utilities was impossible to realise in practice. This was due to the lack of a uniform approach of the respective companies with respect to the following three main issues.