Japan’s Enshu Forest Energy started commercial operations at its 7.1MW biomass-fired power plant in Fukuroi city of Shizuoka prefecture on 16 November. The Enshu plant will burn 90,000t/yr of wood chips made from unused forest materials and gathered mainly from Shizuoka prefecture. It can generate around 53GWh/yr of electricity, which will be sold under the country’s feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme for 20 years. The plant was initially scheduled to come on line in December, but started two weeks earlier as Enshu Forest Energy, the operating company, completed its safety check and test runs earlier than expected.