Good Practice: Biomass Forest Residues Plant, Mortágua, Portugal

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Summary: In 2005, 87% of the Portuguese energy needs were fulfilled by exported fossil fuels - oil, gas and coal. It is necessary to decrease the consumption of fossil fuels and increase the use of renewable energy sources. Portugal has a high potential of renewable energy resources, namely biomass - forest residues and wood waste. The use of biomass to produce energy has advantage beyond the decrease of greenhouse gases emissions and the decrease of the energy invoice, that are related with the reduction of fire risks by cleaning the forest, removing the combustible matters.

To use this potential, the Portuguese Government, already in 1990, asked EDP (Energy of Portugal, S.A), the Portuguese utility, to build and manage a power plant, which the input will be the forestry residues.

CBE (Portuguese Centre for Biomass Energy) performed the studies and concluded that Mortágua was a good location to implement the power plant, because the region has about 27% of the total Portuguese forested areas, and produces around 480.000 tons/year of dry forest residues. Another important reason to choose this location, was the high number of wood industries in the region, namely sawmills, which produce wood residues such as bark.

The final decision to start the construction was made in December 1997. The construction started in January 1998 and the plant started to work in August 1999. EDP is the promoter of the power plant and CBE is responsible for the biomass project.

The Mortágua power plant has an installed capacity of 10 MW with a gross efficiency of 26.5%. The plant was designed to operate 7,800 hours/year and to sell about 60 GWh/year to the electrical national grid.

Aims: The project was developed based in four main objectives € the reduction of the external energy dependence, the decrease of the greenhouses gases related with electricity production in thermal power plants, the use of an endogenous renewable resource and the reduction of fire risks by cleaning the forest. Portugal has high external energy dependence, mainly fossil fuels, so it is important to increase the use of endogenous energy, keeping in mind that Portugal has a great forest biomass potential, it is crucial to exploit this resource.

Summary of Results: In 2005, the power plant consumed around 91,882 ton of forest residues, 800 x 103 Nmm³ of natural gas and 315,448 mm³ of water, to produce about 51,389 MWh of electricity. Regarding the emission of greenhouse gases the plant emitted 1,729 ton of CO₂, 0.03 kton of SO₂, 0.15 of NO_x and 0.02 kton of particles.

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