Biomass Plans Withdrawn for Isle of Wight

Bio­mass Plans With­drawn for Isle of Wight

- by Ross Find­on, July 9, 2013. Source: Isle of Wight Coun­ty Press

The sur­prise deci­sion by Real Ven­tures was announced this morn­ing (Tues­day) just hours before the Isle of Wight Coun­cil was due to con­sid­er an appli­ca­tion by the com­pa­ny to extend its pre­ferred bid­der sta­tus for a for­mer land­fill site at Stag Lane.

Yes­ter­day (Mon­day) a peti­tion was hand­ed to the coun­cil by cam­paign­ers opposed to the devel­op­ment, signed by more than 1,000 peo­ple call­ing for a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on Real Ven­ture’s plans.

In March 2010 Real Ven­tures revealed the pro­pos­al to cre­ate a £130m bio­mass plant capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing two thirds of the Isle of Wight’s elec­tric­i­ty, by burn­ing wood pel­lets. If suc­cess­ful, they said the plant would cre­ate 35 jobs and cut car­bon emissions.

But oppo­nents claimed the scheme was not eco-friend­ly as it would result in tonnes of wood hav­ing to be shipped to the Island from around Europe to fuel the plant, which would be a blot on the land­scape and pro­duce harm­ful fumes.

Years of work have been car­ried out on assess­ing the site and deter­min­ing what work might need to be done to deal with poten­tial haz­ards from its past as a land­fill site, includ­ing deal­ing with asbestos.

Real Ven­tures was estab­lished in 2008 by Islanders Mike Ham­mond, Ray Tuck­er and John Gal­limore. The three pre­vi­ous­ly worked for blue chip indus­tri­al com­pa­nies and were for­mer cam­paign­ers for the anti-onshore wind ener­gy group ThWART.

State­ments from the com­pa­ny as recent as yes­ter­day (Mon­day) sug­gest­ed it was press­ing ahead with the plans. In a state­ment issued today how­ev­er, Real Ven­tures, said its deci­sion to pull out of the Isle of Wight plan was due, in part, to two recent devel­op­ments that had occurred since the com­pa­ny applied to the coun­cil for pre­ferred bid­der sta­tus on June 25. It said it had recon­sid­ered the plans in light of a review of the reme­di­a­tion work need­ed at the site fol­low­ing the lat­est report it had received about Stag Lane and changes to gov­ern­ment finance.

The com­pa­ny said it had oth­er projects under­way that were more favourable in busi­ness terms. It said it would do its best to co-oper­ate with the Isle of Wight Coun­cil and any new devel­op­er for the site.

Real Ven­tures CEO Ray Tuck­er said: “The deci­sion to with­draw from Stag Lane has been made after very care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and sole­ly on the basis of Real Venture’s project portfolio.”

He told the Coun­ty Press that a lot of mon­ey, time and effort had been spent on the Isle of Wight site, but that it had become appar­ent the busi­ness had eas­i­er options else­where in the coun­try. “I don’t think the Stag Lane site is unsuit­able for bio­mass and that it can’t be done. It’s just it’s a tricky site.

“Giv­en the choice between a tricky site and an eas­i­er site, what would you do, and there are lots of eas­i­er sites avail­able,” he said.

Tan­ja Rebel, of oppo­si­tion group Wight Bio­mess, said: “Wight Bio­mess is over the moon with the deci­sion of Real Ven­tures to with­draw its appli­ca­tion for a bio­mass plant along the riv­er Med­i­na. “We hope that the Isle of Wight Coun­cil now safe­guards the riv­er for the long-term future as the sen­si­tive and beau­ti­ful eco-habi­tat that it is.”