Irish company Greenfield will work with Belarusian state company Belbiopharm to create one of Europe’s biggest bioethanol plants, the ecology website Edie.net reports. Raw material for the plant will be produced on lands blighted by the Chernobyl disaster.
According to Greenfield the plant will be built this year and will have an annual capacity of 650 million liters of biofuel.
Belarusian Foreign Minister Sergey Martynov is quoted on the website, saying that Belarus is “probably the only country in Europe with vast territories which can be used for biomass production – the lands affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe [23] years ago.” That land is available for use because it is still unfit for food production.
Greenfield chairwoman Ann McClain stated that the company, will also institute a program to rehabilitate the radioactivite land, which make up 23% of Belarus' territory. In addition, the crops that will be grown on the land will absorb some of the toxins from the soil.
McClain started Greenfield with starting capital from the Heineken Foundation, the charitable arm of the Dutch brewery of the same name. Greenfield was established specifically to work in Belarus.
