Britain's MGT Power Ltd plans to build a second major biomass power generator in northern England, scheduled to start powering around 600,000 homes from 2014, the company said on Monday.

The Tyne Renewable Energy plant in the Port of Tyne, North Shields, will have capacity of 295 megawatts (MW) -- in line with its 500 million pound Tees Renewable Energy plant, one of the world's largest biomass plants.

Large scale biomass projects can operate at baseload and each scheme will produce in one year as much green electricity as the largest 1,000 MW wind farm project, Chris Moore, MGT Power director said in a statement.

Each biomass project will also save 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 from being emitted every year, he said. It was not immediately clear how much the company planned to invest. It quoted North Tyneside Mayor Linda Arkley as saying it represented an investment of over 400 million pounds.

As for Tees Renewable plant, MGT Power plans to source its feedstock for the second plant from certified sustainable forestry projects in North and South America and the Baltic States, developed by the MGT Power and its partners, it said.

But MGT Power said it planned to switch to home-grown feedstock in the long term. It gave no details. The plant would use around 2.4 million tonnes of woodchips per year.

(Reporting by Nao Nakanishi; Editing by Keiron Henderson)

United kingdom Renewable energy Energy