Helius Energy, our sole biomass stock, today rose on news that has appointed McBurney Corp and Morgan Est PLC to carry out pre-engineering work on its flagship 65-megawatt biomass power plant in Stallingborough, Lincolnshire.

Pre-engineering work incidentally includes combustion trials, confirmation of the biomass fuel mixture, and front-end engineering design work and will take around 20 weeks to complete.

All biomass is ultimately powered by the Sun, so it's reasonable enough to call yourself Helius if biomass is your business. One of the company's core beliefs and drivers is ". . . that by 2050, biomass could provide as much as 50% of the world’s primary energy needs. And the next decade will see the development of improved biomass energy conversion systems – with Helius Energy destined to be at the forefront."

That would suggest an enormous growth rate from where we are now, not least for biomass-fired electricity (a secondary energy derivative). Today it is a very tiny proportion of electricity production - according to this wiki, just 44 GWH were generated in 2005, less than half the 93 GWH produced by solar pv.

I do have my doubts about biomass power for developed nations - perhaps wrongly. I can see it making sense in India, but other than a lifestyle choice for remote rural types, it's not an obviously commercial solution to the large, clean and environmentally friendly (clear air and carbon free) emissions of a modern, wealthy, urbanised society. Unless of course, they can tap into a massively cheap feedstock - like chicken manure !

Biomass feedstock anyone?

This is what the world's largest biomass plant at Thetford runs on.