FAQs

Biomass is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. Scientifically this applies to animal matter as well, however when we talk about biomass for energy generation we always mean plant material. This can be wood, straw, food waste or other energy crops such as miscanthus for example. At our Kent combined CHP plant we use wood from local woodlands to generate our energy.

Biomass plants work in much the same way as a coal fired power station. The biomass, in our case wood, is processed, chipped and then burnt at really high temperatures. This heat is used to turn water into steam which then powers a turbine, generating electricity. This energy is then used by businesses and organisations in Discovery Park, with the excess, about 80% being carried by cable to the national grid to be used across the region.

No. Our biomass power plant is saving in the region of 150,000 tons of polluting CO₂ every year. The difference between using biomass and coal or other fossil fuels is simply that the carbon released through burning biomass has only very recently been absorbed from the environment so is part of the existing carbon cycle, the carbon from fossil fuels was absorbed millions of years ago so when released adds to the carbon in the atmosphere. Furthermore, waste wood not collected and used in this way is often disposed in landfill, where it decomposes releasing methane, a gas around 20 times more harmful to the environment than CO₂.

We are working with Euroforest Ltd. to supply all the wood we will need for our CHP plant. We are using around 240,000 tons of locally grown wood every year.

About 15% to 20% of all the clean, green electricity generated is used by the businesses and activities operating in Discovery Park, with the rest carried through cables and fed directly into the national grid for use by homes across the region. Steam is also created as a key part of the process of power generation and this is also being captured to provide renewable heat for Discovery Park tenants too.

No. The processes we use to generate electricity do not create much noise. In fact any noise we do make you probably won’t be able to hear, as it will be lost in the background noise of the local area.

Since the start of our operations, we have used around 800,000 tonnes of wood. Of this, 28,000 tonnes was sourced from outside of the UK at the start of our activities. This represents just 3% of our total wood used to date.

The stockpile at Minster is managed by our wood supplier, EuroForest. In early July, KRE’s steam turbine developed a crack that has taken the unit out of operation. We expect hat the plant will be generating by Christmas.

We faced a choice at the time to support our local suppliers by continuing to take fuel and storing it for future use, or to shut down the supply chain for the duration of the outage. Given the implications for our local suppliers and hauliers of shutting down, we decided to continue taking some volumes of wood to support our suppliers.

The UK Government requires that biomass plant operators submit annual statements of their CO₂ balance, including the effects of harvesting, wood preparation and transportation, as well as the lifecycle CO₂ effect of forestry. According to the UK Government methodology, KRE’s operations result in Green House Gas emission saving of over 95% compared to the average unit of electricity used in the UK.