Journées Expérience européenne en co-combustion

"European experience in biomass co­firing" conference Grenoble, 14th and 15th September 2000 Opening Vincent FRISTOT, President of the Grenoble Urban District Heating Company.

It is a great pleasure for me to take part in the opening of this two­day conference in Grenoble devoted to biomass co­firing.

The Grenoble Urban District Heating Company manages the second largest heating network in France with close on 80,000 connected lodgings. Wood fuel has been favoured over the last 5 years or so ; it has been developed on a large scale for its environmental qualities. As we will see in the course of the next two days, 4,000 lodgings are heated using wood, which corresponds to 5% of the energy distributed by the network.

Investments were necessary to adapt the heating plants to this new fuel.

We were assisted in these undertakings by the Rhône­Alpes Region and by the ADEME (Agency of the Environment and for the Mastery of Energy) enabling an economic balance to be achieved.

As Grenoble Municipal Councillor, in charge of energy matters, I would like to emphasize the positive impact on the quality of the air of the presence of the heating network which enables various types of energies to be recovered (waste, cogen, biomass), thus avoiding consumption of more polluting fossil fuels. Furthermore, the repercussions are positive in terms of jobs, arising from setting up of new local energy installations.

This seminary, which is the opportunity for an exchange between professionals in this field, should therefore enable original, environment­ friendly solutions to be developed, with the backing of local authorities and of the European Commission.

I would therefore like to pay tribute to the partnership set up by the ITEBE (European Technical Institute of Wood Energy) which has managed to gather together the players involved on the European level at the local level of our agglomeration.