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Bioenergy
Burning organic matter instead of coal for Danish heating and backup power.
Our heat and power generating plants play a significant role in supplying the Danish district heating and electricity grids. Our plants allow for great flexibility of supply depending on current needs and do so at a competitive price.
In the past, the plants ran on various fossil fuels, including large amounts of coal. Today, we’ve converted them to operate without coal, with sustainable biomass providing the main low-carbon alternative to the heavily polluting fossil fuel, and natural gas being used in some plants.
Our biomass is primarily wood pellets and wood chips derived from wood residues from sustainable forestry.
As long as biomass is sustainably sourced, it’s considered a renewable fuel because it emits the same amount of CO2 from burning as it absorbs during growth. Energy generated by using biomass is called bioenergy.
Growth
From carbon-heavy to carbon-neutral to carbon-negative
In 2024, we closed our one remaining coal-fired power plant. In our heat and power production we’ve replaced coal with biomass, which is carbon neutral. This marks the end of a chapter in our green transformation story.
Phasing out our coal consumption
Capturing carbon
Starting in 2025, we’ll capture carbon from our Avedøre and Asnæs heat and power plants. The captured carbon will then be sailed to Norway where it’ll be stored in a reservoir in the North Sea.
By capturing carbon from biogenic sources, we will achieve negative emissions.
Find out more about our carbon capture project and how it works
The future of bioenergy
While our heat and power plants continue to play an important role in our low-carbon energy business, building new ones is not part of our strategy for the future.
With the increasing green electrification of Denmark’s energy system, the role of our heat and power plants is primarily to produce heating for the Danish district heating system and backup power for the Danish electricity grid.
In future, cost-competitive alternatives to heat and power plants are expected to be technologies like:
- large-scale heat pumps
- electrical boilers
- surplus heat from Power-to-X facilities.
Over time, they can replace and supplement a substantial part of the sustainable biomass in Danish district heating.
Our projects
Ørsted’s heat and power plants
We operate our six large-scale combined heat and power (CHP) plants, one heat plant, and one peak load power plant as efficiently as possible, minimising environmental impacts.
See all our heat and power plants, their capacity, the fuels they run on, and more
FAQs
