German owner of coal-fired power station on the Thames hopes wood-pellet burning will create almost no carbon emissions

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

Engineering work has begun at a coal-fired power station in Essex that could turn it into the world's largest biomass plant – burning wood pellets with almost no carbon emissions.

RWE, the German owner of the Tilbury power station on the Thames, says it hopes to be ready to produce up to 750 megawatts of green power by the winter.

Tilbury, as with many other traditional coal-fired stations, was heading for closure in 2015 under tough new environmental regulations imposed by the European Union.

"No one has done anything on this scale before and we are confident that this will provide huge carbon savings but also reductions in other emissions such as NOx [nitric oxide] and SO2 [sulphur oxide]," said a spokesman for RWE npower, the UK arm of the business and a sponsor of the Football League.

The company plans to bring in wood from a new pelleting plant it has built in the US state of Georgia. RWE insists the wood sourcing is sustainable although the cross-Atlantic shipping will emit CO2.

RWE would not put a figure on the conversion work underway at Tilbury but is spending £200m building a 50MW combined heat and power plant in Scotland that will power a paper mill at Markinch in Fife to be opened next year.

RWE is also involved in several windfarm developments but is also the owner of other coal-fired power stations and is considering building new nuclear plants. RWE npower produces 10% of Britain's electricity and has 6.6 million UK customers.