88.5 M€ of NER 300 programme for Kaidi biorefinery in Finland



Last February, the Blog reported about the plans of the renewable energy company Kaidi to build a €1 billion cutting-edge biodiesel plant in Finland (see the post to know more information about the planned facility). At that time, Finish media named the project as the biggest Chinese investment in Finland to date.

The final investment decision will be made by the end of this year. In the meantime, a good new for the future progress of the project has just been announced by the company. The European Commission has decided to grant 88.5 M€ of NER 300 investment subsidies for this plant to be built in Ajos (Kemi). The subsidy, which is directed towards producers of renewable energy, was initially granted in 2012 for the realization of a biofuel refinery planned by Vapo that halted the project in 2014. According to the words of Pekka Koponen (CEO of Kaidi Finland), the EC decision strengthens Kaidi’s opportunities to advance the project significantly.

In addition to hundreds of subcontracting jobs, the biorefinery would create 150 full-time positions at the site once operational. Overall, the construction process will bring about an additional 4,000 man-years of work. Discussions with subcontractors and other stakeholders are ongoing.

Figure 1. The Kemi biorefinery in numbers (extracted from the Kaidi web page)

NER 300 is one of the world's largest funding programmes for innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects. The programme is conceived as a catalyst for the demonstration of environmentally safe carbon capture and storage (CCS) and innovative renewable energy (RES) technologies on a commercial scale within the European Union.

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