Agreement on construction of biomass heating plant in Priboj signed – Tendering procedure for contractor to open in October

The president of the Municipality of Priboj, Lazar Rvovic, has signed a trilateral agreement on a full reconstruction of the remote heating system in Priboj with the Ministry of Energy of Serbia and the German Development Bank KfW in Belgrade.

The agreement pertains to the construction of a biomass-powered heating plant, which, along with the municipality of Mali Zvornik, will be the first case of fossil fuels being fully replaced with biomass in Serbia.

The project also entails a full reconstruction of the heating pipeline system in Priboj and the construction of new substations. The agreement is worth EUR 6 million, of which 16.5% is financed by the governments of Germany and Switzerland, whereas the rest comes as proceeds from a long-term loan from KfW, with the minimum interest rate of 1.1% and a grace period of two years.

– Thanks to this project, Priboj will upgrade its energy efficiency and solve the problem of remote heating in the long term – Lazar Rvovic pointed out.

– In addition to the construction of the new biomass-powered heating plant, of 8 megawatts, this will also solve the problem of the old heating pipelines and substations, which are several decades old. Users will now get safer, cheaper and better heating throughout the day. There will be no more harmful environmental effects, and the savings will be great. For Priboj, they will amount to close to EUR 500,000 per season – Rvovic said.

The tendering procedure for the contractor should open in October, and if everything goes as planned, the new heating plant and the fully reconstructed remote heating system should be ready for the next heating season, Radio Luna reports.

In addition to Priboj and Mali Zvornik, within this project, which covers six municipalities and is worth EUR 26.75 million, biomass-powered heating plants will be built in Majdanpek, Novi Pazar, Prijepolje and Nova Varos, and another 19 municipalities have applied for having fossil fuels replaced with biomass at their power plants.

Let us remind that Priboj already has a biomass-powered heating plant in Stari Priboj, which heats the buildings of the elementary school, the kindergarten, the Cultural Center and the Municipal Administration, and the heating plant in Novi Priboj, which supplies schools and the clinic, will be put into operation for this year's heating season, and the plan is also to reconstruct the heating system at the hospital and the Health Center as soon as possible. Priboj will thereby fully replace fossil fuels with biomass, which would make it the first such municipality in the Republic of Serbia.

Opština Priboj

Ministarstvo rudarstva i energetike Republike Srbije

KfW kancelarija Beograd

German Development Bank

Lazar Rvović

biomass powered heating plant

construction of biomass powered heating plant

biomass

energy efficiency