A REMOTE North-East village is pioneering a heating scheme that is powered by woodchips.

Kielder, next to Northumberland's vast Kielder Forest, is today launching a wood- fuelled district heating scheme using chips from the woods that surround it.

The eco-friendly biomass system will supply heat and hot water to the village school, business workshop units, a youth hostel, six three-bedroomed homes and the Kielder Castle Visitor Centre.

The woodchips, which are produced from spruce trees in the forest, generate the same power as other traditional fossil fuels but without any of the associated net carbon emissions.

The £650,000 scheme, which organisers say is the first of its kind in the country, is being spearheaded by Tynedale Council, regional development agency One NorthEast and the Forestry Commission, which will supply 250 tonnes of woodchips each year.

The system will run from a boiler-house in the village and organisers hope similar biomass schemes can be introduced all over Northumberland.

One NorthEast chairman Margaret Fay said: ''The North-East's ambition to become the biomass capital of Britain is starting to be realised with schemes such as this coming to fruition.

''The partners involved in the Kielder project are also part of a wider regional biomass group that is hoping to achieve a target of 50MW of power produced by biomass by the end of the decade," said Ms Fay.

''That's enough to provide hot water for all the houses in Northumberland."

Graham Gill, of the Forestry Commission, said: ''Woodfuel is carbon neutral and trees absorb as much carbon when they are growing as they release when they are burned so there is no net emission of carbon from using woodfuel.

''We replant the areas that are felled with new trees so that there is a never-ending sustainable supply of wood from the forest."