Green energy plant planned for Sheffield

A new green energy company is proposing to build a £20 million combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Sheffield.The Community Renewable Energy Centre is being developed by the new business Mediena Ltd and its trading arm UYE (UK) Ltd, which have been advised by the BTG Corporate Finance team in Birmingham. Additional biomass fired CHP projects are also being considered.

BTG Corporate Finance has helped to raise a six-figure development capital fund to secure the necessary planning and environmental consents.

Steve McMullan, a Birmingham-based BTG Corporate Finance director, said the funds had been secured through a consortium of private individuals.

The plant, which would be biomass-fired, using recovered timber, such as demolition wood, will be sited on brown field land on the Holbrook Industrial Estate.

It is designed to produce over 33,000 megawatt hours of renewable electricity each year. The recovered heat will be sold to a nearby local authority district heating scheme. There is also potential to supply heat to other local consumers.

The use of renewable biomass fuels for the production of the electricity and heat will mean that over 18,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be prevented from being released into the atmosphere each year.

Mr McMullan said: “A planning application has now been submitted to the council. If all goes well then building work would start in the last quarter of this year with a completion date before the end of 2013.

“Sheffield has always been very supportive of green energy and would like to become one of the first self-sufficient cities in the UK. This project is aligned with that strategy. The management team are also looking at other CHP projects in Sheffield and the surrounding areas, of a similar size and investment level.”

Stephen Brooks, a director of Mediena Ltd, the company set up for the overall development of the projects, said: “Sheffield has had a great reputation for delivering innovative renewable and green energy projects for the last twenty five years. We see this project as being a way of extending that great reputation for the next twenty five years.

“We have been quietly working on this project for the last two and a half years and a considerable amount of research has gone into refining our plans for this and other similar developments across the country.” Legal advice on the fund-raising was provided by Tom Durrant of Gateley in Birmingham.