IRISH renewable energy firm Bioverda has said that it is planning major expansion in Britain if proposals contained in that state's recent white energy paper to increase financial support for bioenergy projects are passed.

The move comes just a month after the company, which is a subsidiary of NTR, formally entered the British market after it purchased a majority stake in Tees Valleys Biofuels.

According to Bioverda's chief executive John Mullins, the company is planning to expand into the British biomass combustion and anaerobic digestion markets, both of which gained significant backing in the white paper.

"We're already planning a biomass-fired CHP plant in Teeside, which will be separate to our biofuel plant there and we're working with our sister company Greenstar with regard to starting waste to energy operations using anaerobic combustion and some combustion, " he said.

Mullins said that the British biomass industry got "a real jolt in the arm" with the white paper's proposals to introduce double renewable obligations certificates (ROCs) for the sector.

Under the certificate system, the British government has set targets for how much power electricity companies must generate from renewable sources. Companies who cannot meet these targets must buy ROCs from those that do, increasing profits for renewable energy firms.

Under the white paper proposals, biomass businesses will receive twice as many certificates per megawatt-hour of energy produced than most other renewable businesses, including on-shore windfarms.

Mullins said that the company had already held some informal discussions with British banks regarding expansion.

"We believe that the banks in the UK will be positively disposed to the new industries created by the white paper, " he said.

A portion of the funding for its expansion plans is also expected to come from the Euro488m NTR received when it sold its contract to run Dublin's West-Link toll bridge last week.

Mullins also said that the company did not expect to be affected by energy crop shortages in Britain, despite the country's biomass strategy report expressing concern about that prospect.

He said that Bioverda had ten-year supply contracts with a number of major agricultural players in North-East England which contained extension clauses.