Fortum kicks off construction of waste-to-fuel plant in Poland

The Polish unit of Finnish energy company Fortum said that it is starting the construction of a PLN-35-million (USD 8.1m/EUR 7.5m)
waste-to-fuel facility in the southern Silesia province to stoke up its nearby heat-and-power (CHP) plant.

The project in Zawiercie is to be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first fuel deliveries to the CHP unit in Zabrze will start before the end of 2023, Fortum said in a press release on Tuesday. The capacity of the installation is some 100,000 tonnes of waste per year.

The facility will meet the local challenges of disposing waste not suitable for further recycling, the so-called residual fraction, the company added. The site will be located in close vicinity to the municipal waste management plant in Zawiercie.

The multi-fuel CHP plant in Zabrze is the only installation in Poland designed to co-combust refuse-derived fuel (RDF), Fortum pointed out. The 75 MW plant was commis­sioned in 2018 and can also use biomass.

Fortum started operating in Poland's Silesia in 2003 in the CHP segment. With its two CHP plants, in Zabrze and Czestochowa, it produces and distributes heat through 900 km of own networks for the citizens of Czestochowa, Płock and Wrocław. Since 2016, the company has been also selling electricity and gas on the Polish market.

(PLN 10 = USD 2.31/EUR 2.13)

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