PvT Capital and Greenfield JV on Chernobyl ethanol plan
In Belarus, PvT Capital and Greenfield Project Management announced that they would joint venture on development of an ethanol plant at Chernobyl. The Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), which had been working with PvT, also joins the group with this announcement. Greenfield had previously established an 80 percent interest in the public-private partnership Belbiopharm, with the government of Belarus holding the remaining 20 percent, in developing the project.
The project will use biomass harvesting for ethanol to remove radioactivity from the soil near to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Greenfield says that the agreement gives the company the means to complete pre-construction at its Mozyr and Bobruisk projects.
Greenfield Project Management signed an agreement last year with the national government to build a 145 Mgy gallon ethanol plant at Chernobyl. Project cost has been estimated at $288 million.
Ethanol development in Eastern Europe has been under a cloud due to heat and drought which have badly affected the primary Eastern European wheat growing areas such as the Ukraine.
Aside from the Belrus plant, only a 1 million tonne grain ethanol plant in Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation, championed by President Shaimiyev has gone forward. The project is expected to be completed by 2010. Tatarstan is approximately 900 miles east of Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
