The Independent Consumer and Competition Commission has issued an electricity licence to Markham Valley Biomass Limited to generate and supply electricity.
The current eight electricity licence holders generate electricity from hydro plants.
Markham Valley Biomass Limited (MVBL) now joins eight licensed electricity generation companies who generate and supply power.
The licence is for the generation of electricity to PNG Power, which was issued by ICCC on October 4th.
“Markham Valley Biomass has a Power Purchase Agreement with PNG Power, and that has also come to ICCC for approval,” said Paulus Ain, ICCC Commissioner.
A subsidiary of Oil Search Ltd, it generates 15 megawatts of power from biomass in Markham Valley and supply to PNG Power through its Ramu Grid.
A renewable energy project would use wood chips from tree grown to fuel a biomass power plant to generate power.
“It has many advantages for a country like PNG, its 100 percent renewable, extremely competitive power price, already the project employs 300 full time equivalents, establishing plantations, working on the engineering power plant that will later grow to 500 when in full production,” production director of MVBL, Michael Henson, said.
MVBL will now go through 33 months’ construction phase and should supply power by 2020.
“Already we have about 2000 hectares of plantations established which will become the fuel that will be ramping up and we hope to establish another 2000 hectares next year,” Henson added.
(Markham Valley Biomass Limited production director, Michael Henson)