Expansion of biomass use in Slovak district heating

Trenčín, in western Slovak Republic, is a 60,000 inhabitant town. The local district heating company, Služby pre bývanie, provides housing management services with a focus on heat supply. The company recognised the value of biomass for heat production and aimed to achieve usage of 70 per cent biomass and 30 per cent natural gas to produce heat.

Služby pre bývanie applied to SlovSEFF  to finance the replacement of gas fired boilers with two biomass boilers. The new boilers consume straw and rapeseed and have the capacity of 4 MW each.

The €290,000 investment delivers five times more heat than the gas fired boilers – 100,000 gigajoule instead of 20,000, and the end users will have their heat bills reduced by 10-15 per cent a year. By September 2015, 5,200 apartments and six non-residential consumers were heated with biomass. In addition, the new boilers emit less CO2 into the atmosphere. Finally, local agricultural companies benefit from integration into the energy supply scheme and selling their by-products, reducing waste.

The project is a winning solution for the company through reduced costs, for the local community through cheaper and cleaner energy, and for the city which is now more energy independent.

The EBRD, through SlovSEFF, supports the sustainable financing and implementation of energy efficiency projects by the private sector. Together, the private, residential and public sectors can make a change in energy consumption patterns and contribute to the environmental protection.