In the race to reduce carbon emissions across the planet, Spain set a milestone on Tuesday. The place? La Robla, Leon. In the El Crispín industrial estate, very close to where the Naturgy thermal power plant was located. There the presentation of the project took place this Thursday in an act in which, together with the directors of the promoting companies, representatives of the local administrations and the Government of Spain have been present.
Two Spanish companies, the energy company Reolum and Tresca Ingeniería, together with the investment fund Incus, have designed a project, La Robla Green, in which they will invest 439 million euros to build two facilities. A biomass power generation plant, Roblum, with a negative carbon balance; that is to say, it captures more carbon than it emits, to which is added the largest green e-methanol plant in Europe (a basic fuel in the chemical, pharmaceutical, industry).
The most unique thing about this plant is that it goes beyond the neutrality objectives set by the European Union. With it, it is possible to capture more carbon (CO2) than emitted, which we also take advantage of for the generation of green hydrogen, so the CO2 balance ends up being negative”, explains Yann Dumot, general director of Roblum, the company that leads the project.
Added to this great peculiarity is the origin of the biomass chosen to produce green electricity. “It is mainly corn straw (without alternative use), although we will also use rye straw (not suitable for animal consumption) and soybeans. It is the only project that has chosen this biomass, so at the origin we do not have any competition”, continues the manager.
The choice has a lot to do with the location. León is the area of Spain with the highest production of corn and its straw is a waste with hardly any use and that makes it very difficult for farmers to manage their fields since they must use chemical products to induce its dissolution and reabsorption in the soil.
Roblum, was awarded in October 2022 with 46.1 MW of electrical power in the third renewable energy auction convened by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, which will allow it to generate about 50 MW of renewable capacity, this volume It can be compared to the consumer demand of 50,000 households.
In this case, the plant will generate, in addition to renewable electricity, a heat network capable of supplying public buildings in the town and industries in the area for an initial period of 25 years. The CO2 produced in this process will be captured and used at the La Robla Nueva Energía plant to mix it with green hydrogen to produce e-methanol.
This product is one of those that competes with green hydrogen and ammonia to become one of the green fuels of the future. Faced with them, it has the attraction of being easier to transport, it is a liquid as safe as gasoline. It does not pose a risk of leakage like hydrogen or poisoning like ammonia. “It can be transported through the same channels as gasoline. Barrel, tube, etc”, explains Francisco Carro, general director of Tresca.
In turn, it is key to the decarbonization of methanol-intensive industries such as the chemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the production of antifreeze, paints, construction materials... "The global appeal of this project is that we are going to produce methanol greener, it could be called very green, which exists because it comes from energy generated with biomass and hydrogen that will come from renewable energy”, says Carro.
The promoters assure that they have already signed a distribution agreement with a German company to sell part of their production. It is the spearhead to open up a market in which they say is the main consumer in Europe, 2.5 million tons per year of the total 100 million tons of methanol that the world chemical industry demands annually.
The estimated production of La Robla when it is fully operational, its opening is planned for 2027, will be 400 GWh per year, 4 thermal MW of heat, and 100,000 tons of e-methanol.
La Robla is also presented as an example of a circular project. Not only because of its outstanding use of agricultural remains, but also because the production of renewable energy can place this area of Leon as a pole of industrial attraction. The location of the El Crispín industrial estate will be connected to the national railway, a vehicle for which the promoters bet as the main transport channel for their e-methanol, at least to the main ports of the country, which will be the connection channel with the Central European markets where they glimpse their main source of customers.
At the local level, the development of the project will create some 450 jobs in the construction of the plants that will begin in the second half of 2024, and its start-up and management will provide around a hundred industrial jobs and 90 rural ones. “It is a business concept that helps to revitalize a region and a province like León that needs industrial projects that allow the population to settle in the territory and that the people who live here can have job opportunities in their immediate surroundings. It contributes to rural development and prevents depopulation”, says Dumot.
