Japan’s Iitate biomass plant to start up in mid-July

A 7.5MW biomass plant in Japan's Fukushima prefecture's Iitate village has completed construction and will start commercial operations in mid-July, the operating company said today.

The biomass unit will burn a total of 95,000 t/yr of unused wood and wood bark gathered from Fukushima prefecture, including several areas hit by the nuclear disaster in 2011. Those biomass fuels may contain radioactive materials, so the unit is equipped with double filters and will continuously monitor radioactive materials in the exhaust gas.

The company will sell the electricity under Japan's feed-in-tariff scheme for 20 years and consider continuing commercial operations after that. The total project expense is $62mn and received $34mn from the Japanese government's subsidy scheme to build power plants in Fukushima, in efforts to revitalise the prefecture. The company started building the Iitate plant in August 2022.

The power unit is operated by joint venture Iitate Bio Partners. Japanese utility Tokyo Electric Power owns 40pc of the company, while construction company Kumagai-Gumi, developer Kobelco Eco-Solution and Tokyo Power Technology each have a 20pc stake. Tokyo Power Technology is a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power, and the Iitate plant is located around 40km from Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

By Takeshi Maeda