This is Dalkia's biggest biomass project to date. Starting at the end of 2011, 700,000 metric tons of biomass, 80% of it from forests, will be used in place of coal. The €70 million investment is expected to generate for Dalkia an additional €36.4 million in annual revenues. As from 2012, the project will exceed Poland's Energy Policy goal of 15% renewable energy, and will avoid 460,000 metric tons of annual CO₂ emissions.

The biomass supply chain will be put in place while work is in progress on upgrading the boilers, expected to last 18 months. Most of the fuel will come from outside suppliers, a portion being reserved for Dalkia Polska's 2,000 hectares of energy plantations in the regions of Poznan et Elblag.

The cogeneration plants where it is planned to burn the biomass will be highly energy efficient. Owned by two subsidiaries of Dalkia Polska, Dalkia Poznan ZEC and Dalkia Lodz, they will feed green power to the national electric grid and supply heating to the 700,000 inhabitants of Łódź and Poznań served by those cities' district heating systems.

Dalkia Polska is a subsidiary of Dalkia International (65%) and the EBRD (35%), and is an acknowledged player in Poland's renewable energy market. For the past two years, the Łódź and Poznań cogeneration plants have been burning a mixture of 10% biomass along with coal, producing 3% green electricity. Dalkia Polska is also looking into the possibilities of converting domestic waste to energy, and can tap the expertise of Veolia Environnement for future waste-to-energy projects in Poland's main cities.

Dalkia operates 176 biomass facilities worldwide, with a combined capacity of 3,135 MW and 664 MWe, and consuming 1.8 million metric tons of biomass. It aims to multiply this figure by 6 between now and 2020. In France, Dalkia is the no. 1 operator of wood-burning power plants.

source:http://www.dalkia.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2010-05-17,poland-biomass.htm