Last March, as part of our international activities, we attended the World Biogas Expo in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
By means of the HPS and Adicomp Srl stand at the fair (our parent company and associates respectively), we had the opportunity to chat with a host of key operators in the biogas sector, on both a British and international level and in so doing were able to continue to keep abreast with developments in a growing sector in Europe.
We took advantage of our return via London to visit two of the most significant energy icons of the 20th century: the Battersea Park and Bankside Power Stations.
The Battersea Power Station, which has been brilliantly redeveloped by the WilkinsonEyre firm of architects, has contributed significantly to the revaluation of a once forgotten district of the capital of the UK and this red brick giant is now a close neighbour to the new American Embassy building and its gardens, in the south east of the city.
The Battersea Power Station began producing electricity in 1935 with the completion of its A Station, providing energy to key districts in the south of London such as Wimbledon and Croydon.
In 1955, with the now completed phase B and its four 103 meter high chimneys, the power station became a recognised feature of the city’s landscape.
Battersea would go on to produce 503 MW of energy, thus becoming the largest power station in Europe.
Meanwhile, further down the river Thames, the Bankside Power Station, which was also redeveloped at the beginning of this century by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & De Meuron, became London’s modern art gallery: the Tate Modern. It is an example of both urban integration and the importance of conserving symbols from an era which reminds us of how progress can change everything.
The Bankside Power Station went on to produce 300 MW per annum and was operative from 1891 to 1981, with ongoing redevelopment and upgrades including the addition of its enormous chimney in 1953.
But those were different times when concerns about the environment were not a priority for a society moving between crises and post war periods which marked the rhythm of that era.
For years, both power stations filled the air with dense smoke, adding to that produced by all the other chimneys in a city which was growing at a frenetic rate. The Battersea Power Station alone consumed 10,000 tonnes of coal per week to produce a fifth of the city’s electricity.
This mind-boggling figure really underlines how times have changed and that, notwithstanding the slow progress, the world is on its way to bringing an end to an energy model sustained by fossil fuels.
Today, from the top of one of the towering chimneys of these huge edifices, albeit with a different perspective thanks to the fog, we can imagine just how the city must have been back then; but knowing too that the presence of these two now defunct icons of industrial architecture is merely a sign that other models, such as renewable gases, are taking over in an energy sector which is both sustainable and environmentally friendly, thus rendering them simply a footprint from the past.
HPBS
Your specialist in renewable gases
If you want to know more about this and our other projects, do not hesitate to contact us.
