WOODCHIP BOILER A big Reduction in our Carbon Footprint! Trigonos has installed a low carbon woodchip heating and hot water system (Dec 2007).	BOELER NADDION PREN Lleihau ein ol-traed carbon! Mae Trigonos wedi gosod system gwres a dwr poeth naddion pren carbon isel (Rhagfyr 2007).
The woodchip store - installing the floor and archimedes screw.	Plumbing in - Ron Hughes and assistant

When you next visit Trigonos your hot water and warmth will be coming direct from our new woodchip boiler. Welsh woodchip has replaced all our consumption of heating oil and about 90% of our gas. We saw this investment as an appropriate local response to global problems: climate change and unsustainable dependence on crude oil and gas. The project has resulted in:

• replacing oil and gas with woodchip, reducing our CO2 emissions by approximately 75% (from 87 to 15 tonnes pa)*. This includes all emissions transportation and processing of the raw materials
• sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide emissions being reduced by around 85%
• the use of around 55 tonnes of woodchip a year, all of which will come from within a radius of 40 miles of Trigonos. The current supplier is based in Corris and uses waste timber from local plantations
• a woodchip boiler that operates at around 92% efficiency, compared with 25% or less for an open wood fire. The waste product will be only 1500 kg of wood ash p.a. (think 1000 bags of flour!) which we can use on the land as a very good fertiliser.
  

This project has taken 5 years from the first enquiries to fruition. It has been an expensive project in capital cost terms, coming to just over £150,000. In part this is because the old system that has been replaced involved eight separate oil and gas boilers in three separate boiler houses. We now have a single boiler house with one wood chip boiler and an LPG boiler for back-up.We estimate the woodchip will provide 95+% of our need with the balance from gas.

We have been very fortunate to gain a grant from the Wood Energy Business Scheme (run by the Forestry Commission) of £66,000 (under EU Objective 1). Without this we could not have gone ahead. The balance of £84,000 has been raised as a loan through Triodos Bank, with repayment over 20 years. We hope the cost of borrowing will be offset by the savings on fuel costs, woodchip currently being significantly cheaper than oil or gas, and less variable in price.
We hope this will be a beacon project and an inspiration to people and organisations locally and throughout Wales.

The following were the main contributors to this very successful project:

Dulas Ltd - Biomass Energy Specialists; Pensel - Architect; Jones & Williams - Building Contractor; Ron Hughes Heating & Plumbing - Heating engineer.

*Based on DEFRA calculations

The first woodchip delivery

Medwyn Jones the builder

The Archimedes screw that feeds the woodchip to the boiler inside the woodchip store