Archived decisions

Appendix 6

Proposed Defra Grant

Bio Fuel Project - Hilliers Arboretum - Jermyns House

Opportunity

The opportunity exists for the County Council to apply for a grant from Defra for 40% of the additional extra costs for providing a biomass plant over conventional fossil fuel plant.

Existing basement oil fired boiler plant is subject to flooding and is no longer servicable. A temporary packaged oil plant has been in operation for sometime supplying heat to Jermyn's house at a monthly cost of £1600.

Outline proposal

To provided a dedicated biomass boiler house with integral wood chip store that can utilise wood chip fuel from a variety of sources to provide heating to Jermyn's house via underground heating mains. The boiler house would be located to the rear/side of Jermyns house (adjacent Roberts bungalow) with easy access for fuel delivery.

Advantages

· Provides a permanent solution for the heating requirements of the building and the plant is life expired already.

· Provides an annual saving of £20000 in plant hire costs and £3600 in fuel costs over the current temporary arrangement.

· Overall reduction in the CO2 emissions of approximately 30tCo2 per annum.

· Staff are familiar with handling wood products and are likely to embrace the wood biomass boiler technology. Wolfgang Bopp has previously worked at a site using a biomass wood chip boiler. Ash disposal could be made through the arboretum's normal composting systems.

· Possible use of wood from the arboretum although this would need to be considered alongside the time constraints in producing the wood chips using arboretum garden staff

· Opportunity for publicity through the visitor centre and as a demonstration plant

· Jermyns house is used as a conference centre and meeting venue and loss of the heating plant would not be catastrophic for the arboretum operation if reliability problems are experienced.

· Elimination of the potential oil pollution for this SSI site. 2 leakage incidents in recent years involving the Environment Agency.

· Wood chip can be supplied from the existing operational biomass boiler plant at QECP alongside Hilliers Arboretum own production and other suppliers (South East wood fuel Agency)

Disadvantages

· A dedicated boiler house would need to be constructed which will require planning permission. Alternatively, Roberts bungalow could be refitted to form the boilerhouse and wood chip store.

Other Considerations

The Defra Bio-energy grant requires that the project is publicised with ongoing monitoring of the site for a period of 7 years

Costs

Total estimated costs for the works would comprise: £42000 grant from Defra with Landlord funding of £158000 making a total construction cost of £200000.