Widnes Biomass Facility

Also known as Mersey Bioenergy, Widnes Biomass Facility is a Biomass EfW facility based on processing up to 147,000 tonnes of Wood Waste per annum generating 20 MWe of electricity for export to the National Grid with around 7.8 MWth available to local industry.

Widnes Biomass Facility Operational
Site Location See Biomass EfW → page for a larger UK Wide map.
Operator	Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC)
Capacity	22.8 MWe
Feedstock	Waste Wood
EPR (Waste Licence)	JP3132RV
ROC	Yes
CfD
CHP	Yes

Operators Annual Report

Input Data

Year	Wood	Litter	RDF	Other	Total
2017	19605	0	0	0	19605
2018	88077	0	0	0	88077
2019	129174	0	0	0	129174
2020	124624	0	0	0	124624
2021	143124	0	0	0	143124
2022	132199	0	0	0	132199

Output Data

Year	IBA	IBA %ge of Tot IN	APC	APC %ge of Tot IN
2017	664	3.39%	90	0.46%
2018	3529	4.01%	1668	1.89%
2019	4898	3.79%	2709	2.10%
2020	6466	5.19%	2864	2.30%
2021	8990	6.28%	3590	2.51%
2022	7637	5.78%	2978	2.25%

Stobart Biomass Plant

Summary

Also known as Mersey Bioenergy, Widnes Biomass Facility is a Biomass EfW facility based on processing up to 147,000 tonnes of Wood Waste per annum generating 20 MWe of electricity for export to the National Grid with around 7.8 MWth available to local industry.

The plant is located approximately 400m from the north bank of the River Mersey, approximately 0.6 miles west of Widnes Town Centre.

The project also intends to use the heat from the plant in the neighbouring wood drying facility which drys 140,000 tonnes of virgin wood material a year for sale into the wood chip and pellet market - which is projected to generate an additional income of around £200m during the same 16 year contract.

The plant was financed via a £7.5m equity investment for a 40% stake in the plant's holding company, Mersey Bioenergy Ltd (MBL) and was sold by Stobart Infrastructure to MBL for £2m. The plant was also financed by the Green Investment Bank (GIB) (now Green Investment Group (GIG)) who provided 49% of the equity via a £17m mezzainine loan and a £13.2m equity investment via its Foresight UK Waste Resources & Energy Investments (UKWREI). The remainder of the £42.1 mezzanine finance was provided by GCP Infrastructure Investors. In additon, Investec Bank plc and Eksport Kredit Fonden (EKF) together committed £42.5m of senior loans to the project , while Stobart and Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC), the projects engineering, procurement and construction contractor (EPC) both took an equity stake with commitments of £9.8m and £2.6m respectively, . The total cost of the project is estimated to be around £110m, .

Plant

The facility entered into operation in May 2017 with BWSC chosen as the EPC contractor for the project. The boiler was supplied by Standardkessel GmbH and the technology is a standard pusher-type grate technology.

Annual Sustainability Tonnage Input/Fuel

The tonnage received by the plant in the most recent Annual Sustainability Report and for the previous 3 years for 2020/21 was reported by Ofgem as below:

Year	Waste Wood (m3)	Waste Wood (t)	Straw	Miscanthus	Arboricultrual Waste	Sawmill Residue	Foresrty Residue	Round Wood	Short Rotation Coppice	MBM	Other Material
2020/21	0	113342	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2019/20	0	150525	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2018/19	0	63147	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2017/18	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Waste Tonnage, By Origin

The table shows a list of the Waste for the Permit JP3132RV, that has arrived into sites as reported to the Regulator and then publicised in their reported statistics. The Data was last updated on October 2024. The total reported tonnage arriving at the site was: 132,666.93t.

Where this tonnage exceeds that reported in year of the corresponding annual report, this may be due to the following reasons:

• Tonnage may have been received but not incinerated, i.e. the material is held pending incineration (the operator return to the EA reports as received whereas the annual report focuses on when the waste is incinerated.)
• Material may have been received into the site but treated in some other way than incineration.
• Material may have been received on the but transferred out of site for disposal/treatment at another site rather than incineration on the site.

EWC Code	Origin of Waste	Tonnes In
19 12 07	Halton	132666.93

The Wood Waste fuel supply used to generate energy is provided under a 16 year Fuel Supply Agreement (FSA) with Stobart Energy which equates to a contract worth £108m over the 16-year period.