The Marseille administrative court in France has cancelled the operating license of the Gardanne biomass-fired power plant, considering that the impact study was insufficient.
The Gardanne project, developed by Uniper (E.ON group), consisted in replacing the coal-fired Provence-4 unit by a 150 MW wood-fired power plant, which should account for 6% of the electricity generation in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. The power plant is expected to burn 850 kt/year of wood, half of which would come from waste and the other half from local resources cuts. When starting operations, the plant was planned to import 55% of wood resources and to use only local wood as of 2026.
However, the administrative court ruled that the power plant would have significant impacts on local forests, requiring 37% of the local wood resources to operate. The impact study was then flawed, which has led to cancelling the operating license.
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