Port Talbot in South Wales will become home to the world’s largest biomass-burning power station after ministers approved a £400 million renewable energy plant.

The power station, to be fuelled by wood chips, will be built by Prenergy Power and will provide energy for half the homes in Wales when it is completed in 2010. It will be almost eight times the size of the UK’s next- biggest biomass-fuelled power station.

The construction phase of the project will mean that 400 jobs are created in Port Talbot and 150 full-time jobs are expected to be created when the plant is up and running.

It will deliver 70 per cent of the Welsh renewable energy target for 2010 and will displace 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, which would have been produced by older power stations.

Wood chips from sustainable forests in the United States, Canada, Eastern Europe and South America will be shipped in to fuel the station. A Prenergy spokesman said: “The most important thing is that the wood will come from forests that meet the criteria for sustainable management established by the Forestry Stewardship Council.”

The company has also been forced to defend the use of large bulk carriers that will bring the wood chips to Port Talbot, saying that shipping is the most benign and environmentally friendly form of bulk transport.

Matthew Carse, chief executive of Prenergy, said: “Using wood chip from independently certified sustainable forestry, which ensures harvested trees are replanted, means that generation is carbon-neutral and sustainable.”

The Port Talbot power station joins eight big renewables projects given the green light in the past 12 months.

Prenergy Power is a subsidiary of GWH, a private investment company that concentrates on developing renewable energy projects in Europe.

Separately, the UK’s first proposal for more than 30 years to build a coal-fired power station, at Kingsnorth in Kent, was expected to be given the go-ahead last night. The plan, from E.ON, the German energy group, is being viewed as a test of the Government’s commitment to renewable energy. There are proposals for at least seven other new coal stations.

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