This may seem to be an odd news item but many water companies have land to spare, expert technical knowledge in combined water and power issues. Imagination and Chinese investment are making this idea a reality ….

A Chinese group will invest $2.9bn (£2bn) in two biomass plants in Wales designed to produce electricity and grow food at the same time. China’s SinoFortone Group is backing the projects at Holyhead and Port Talbot, which aim to use waste warm water from biomass power stations to grow king prawns and vegetables with aquaculture and hydroponics.The projects are being developed by UK firm Orthios Eco Parks, whose 299 MWe biomass plant at Holyhead on the island of Anglesey in the north will feed what it calls the world’s largest on-land prawn hatchery. In Port Talbot, South Wales, a 350 MWe biomass plant will facilitate a large aquaculture and hydroponics operation. In the Orthios approach, forestry waste is charred by pyrolysis to generate heat to drive steam turbines. [Why not sewage waste? & AD].

The warm water this produces is channeled into aqua-farms to grow king prawns, while the murky prawn water and the carbon dioxide from the pyrolysis are used as nutrients to grow vegetables. Orthios says this ‘combined-food-and-power’ approach is environmentally friendly, but also good business because the demand for prawns is rising fast.