THE Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust (RCHT) is reducing its impact on the local environment and cutting its fuel bills with the installation of a new eco-boiler and wood burner.

Costing £600,000, with most of the money coming from the Department for Health's Central Energy and Sustainability Fund, the biomass boiler is set to reduce the hospital's CO2 emissions by 1,200 tonnes a year.

Biomass is fuel made from plant material and animal waste.

It will also burn wood sourced from local sawmills and woodland, rather than using fossil fuel, saving the trust about £12,000 a year.

The biomass boiler will operate all year round, providing the Truro site's summer base heating and hot water. David Hastings, the trust's director of estates, said: "Our plan is to have the biomass boiler running flat out all year, including the summer months, when the biomass boiler will provide the vast majority of the heat. However, in winter and when demand is high, the gas boilers kick in and provide the supplementary heat that is required."

Forest Fuels Ltd, based in Shebbear, Devon, will deliver four lorry loads of wood chip from its depot at Mitchell, between Truro and St Austell, to the Royal Cornwall Hospital site every week. Will Frost, of Forest Fuels, said: "This system keeps the fuel supply operation local. This enables the woodchip to have low fuel-miles, therefore minimising the carbon footprint of fuel supply while also ensuring both local employment in the loading and delivery part of the process and most importantly this can help secure improved forestry management in the locality."

Mark Summers, head of the Low Carbon Programme for the RCHT, added: "We have seen this project as a major contributor to the development of the local biomass market. Because of our involvement in biomass, we have enabled local suppliers to gear up and stimulate the development of the local wood fuel market."