Biomass Cogeneration Plant in Lebork

The city of Lebork with its 35'000 inhabitants is located in the Pomorskie Voivodship in Northern Poland, close to the Baltic Sea Coast and some 60 km from Gdansk. It is surrounded by cultivated fields and forests. The Pomorskie Voivodship, with its vast forests, has an important potential for the exploitation of renewable energy sources in general and biomass in particular. In line with the EU directive on renewable energy, Poland has set itself the goal of increasing renewable energy use to 15% of overall energy consumption.

The overall project objective is to reduce emissions and environmental pollution caused by the coal fired district heating system of the city of Lebork. This improves the environmental, health and living conditions in the area.

The direct beneficiary is the operator of the district heating system of the city of Lebork. Indirect beneficiaries are the residents of the region benefitting from reduced emissions and better air quality.

• A biomass fired cogeneration plant will be installed to provide base load heat for heating and hot water generation. Furthermore, the plant will produce electricity for its own needs, with the surplus production fed into the local electricity distribution grid.
• Construction of a building sheltering all parts of the plant including controlling and monitoring devices as well as facilities for the plant's staff.
• A simple steel construction will be built as a biomass storage place. It will also include the necessary machinery to transform supplied biomass into the appropriate form required by the plant. Biomass supply will be transported from the storage building to the plant using an automatic feeding connection. Finally, a short connection road will be built to assure accessibility of the storage building for trucks bringing biomass from suppliers located in proximity of the city of Lebork.

Achieved results:  

• The installed biomass cogeneration plant produces 39,5% of the annual heat required for the city's district heating system. The biomass cogeneration plant produces 36,257 Mwh thermal and 8,566 Mwh electrical energy per year.
• Substantial reduction of CO, CO2, SO2, NOx and dust emissions achieved.
• Building for the biomass plant, biomass supply and storage infrastructure constructed (incl. 4 biomass transporting vehicles and 1 biomass processing equipment i.e. stationary electric wood chopper).

Phase 15 01.07.2011 - 31.12.2016   (Completed)