8/2/07 (Daily Express) - Lahad Datu: The Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) managed to save RM2.5 million annually by fully utilising discarded Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) in its biomass power generator plant in Sahabat, here.

Its Chairman Tan Sri Dr Mohd Yusof Noor said the power plant uses the discarded FFB to generate electricity and subsequently help Felda to reduce its energy bill.

He said the plant was designed to process the items at a rate of 30 tonnes per hour or 250,000 annually.

"The biomass power generator plant is able to generate 7.2 mega watt electricity and supply them to our oil palm processing plant at Sahabat Oil Products, Kernel Crushing plant and domestic consumer via the Felda Engineering Services," he said.

He said this when officiating the Sahabat Biomass Power Generator Plant at Gugusan Felda Sahabat 16 by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. Also present was Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman.

Dr Mohd Yusof said prior to setting up the biomass plant, oil palm factories in Sahabat had to discard 60 per cent of the processed FFB.

According to him, Felda had to depend fully on the diesel-powered plant with a capacity of 8.0 million litre of diesel usage that cost the national oil palm authority RM12 million annually.

He said the power generating using the diesel plant is very high at 55 sen per unity forcing Felda to provide large subsidy to its domestic consumers.

Apart from that, the diesel generator is not efficient as well as fond of polluting the environment.

In this respect, he said Felda carried out a study on the potential of generating electricity and steam using oil palm industry biomass.

The biomass plant commenced construction on Aug, 2002 and cost RM40 million.

"The project also, inevitably, become a model to similar developers in this country and overseas in the effort to preserve the environment," he said.

He said the returns it received from the 53,000 units of Certified Emission Reduction (CERSs) annually and from its sale of about RM1.2 million should be able to finance part of the plant expenses.