Cofely has completed the first phase of the Leicester District Energy Scheme - a 25-year partnership between Leicester City Council and Cofely District Energy.
The scheme will enable thousands of homes, as well as council-owned and other buildings in Leicester, to be provided with environmentally friendly energy.
Spanning six city estates, the system is the largest of its kind in the UK to be installed in one phase. It uses a combination of over 5MW of low carbon gas-fired combined heat and power and upgraded biomass boilers, which will help achieve carbon savings of around 12,000 tonnes per year by 2014. It is predicted that these carbon savings will rise to more than 20,000 tonnes per year by 2020.
Also included in the scheme are two 1.6MW combined heat and power (CHP) engines at the University of Leicester, that will also provide heating to several city council buildings and HMP Leicester.
It took around 18 months to lay the 14km of pipework required, but this has been completed five weeks ahead of schedule.
Cllr Rory Palmer, deputy city mayor, said: 'This is a major milestone for Leicester and our commitment to making this a low carbon city. The District Energy Scheme will help us make dramatic carbon reductions and is a huge step forward to helping us achieve energy stability in the city. We will now be working to encourage other local organisations to join the scheme, and help us to extend the benefits of combined heat and power further across the city.'
