The European Commission has approved almost 140 million euros in additional support for the construction of a combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Vilnius.
The Commission said that it had allocated, through two financing decisions, 90.8 million euros in Cohesion Fund grants for the plant’s biomass-fired unit and the remaining 48.5 million euros for its municipal waste-fired unit.
The EU’s executive body expects that the projects, slated to be completed by the end of 2019, will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the country’s waste sector by around 10 percent and to lower municipal waste landfilling in the region.
The European Investment Bank in December 2016 approved a loan of 190 million euros, backed by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), for the Vilnius CHP plant project.
The project is being developed by the state energy group Lietuvos Energija, but the municipal heating supplier Vilniaus Silumos Tinklai will in the future be able to buy up to 5 percent of shares in the plant, which will have a total capacity of 88 megawatts of electricity and 227 MW of heat.
Lietuvos Energija puts the total value of the project at 350 million euros, with the remainder to be financed from its own funds.
