ADVERTORIAL by
ANTOINE KOHLER
Director at SIMEC Energy
SIMEC’s portable bio-power offers large energy users a great low-cost and low-carbon solution
Antoine Kohler, Director of SIMEC Energy, explains how the company’s portable biofuel generators can slash electricity bills and reduce carbon emissions for industrial users and wider business. SIMEC is the energy division of industrialist Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, a global standard bearer for green manufacturing of metals and engineered products.
Who are SIMEC Energy and what is the company’s expertise in renewable energy? We are a part of the SIMEC Group - an international energy, infrastructure and natural resources business, founded 50 years ago. Today SIMEC Group has annual turnover of almost $2.5 billion and net assets valued at $3.2 billion. Our activities span renewable energy generation, mining, shipping and commodities trading through key hubs in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Our current renewables portfolio includes investments in wind, hydro, pumped hydro, solar, battery storage, energy from waste and biofuel generation. SIMEC is also a member of the global GFG Alliance and, as such, has a key focus on developing large-scale green energy capacity to support GFG’s low-carbon metals and industrials strategy.
THE EMA MAGAZINE • ISSUE MAY—JUNE 2019
What are the biofuel generators and how long has SIMEC been working to develop this source of energy?
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The generators are modular relocatable generating stations with capacities ranging from 1.2MW up to 18MW. Electricity is generated from sustainable biofuels primarily made from waste oils and residues, but fuels such as hydro treated vegetable oil, tallow, rapeseed and fatty acid methyl esters can also be used. These are ideal for large energy users such as manufacturers, large retail outlets, airports or data centres who wish to benefit from an Ofgem accredited renewable energy source together with substantial savings when compared to imported power prices and displacement of fossil fuel heat. Each station can be located on a spare piece of land at the customer’s site and configured to recover the waste heat allowing sustainable steam, hot and chilled water to be produced, making SIMEC’s generation plants the complete carbon-neutral energy solution.
We first identified the potential for using alternative fuels when our Innovation team were looking for sustainable ways to reduce the cost of power for our own industrial assets. We researched the existing renewable energy initiatives and identified that the Renewable Obligation (RO) programme was supporting renewable liquid fuels or liquid biomass. There were a number of constraints as the RO was coming to an end in March 2017 so we quickly developed the project using a particular fuel and successfully commissioned 120MW of generation capacity in the months leading up to the 31 March 2017 deadline qualifying the generators eligibility to participate in the RO until 2037.
