Until September 2008, announcements of new bioenergy facilities were flying around like livestock in a strong tornado. In our conversations here at Forest2Market, we often wondered if the laws of gravity and the realities of manufacturing—huge capital costs, financing difficulties, drawn out permitting processes and a 50 percent “go live” rate—still applied. In the last quarter of 2008, we saw a dramatic decrease in the number of new bioenergy facilities announced and multiple deadlines passed for plants that never made it off the ground.
Indeed, we have seen some evidence of these realities reasserting themselves. In late January, the 40 MW Biomass Gas & Electric plant scheduled to be built in Tallahassee ran into “ not-in-my-backyard” trouble. The company is now looking for a new site. Rollcast Energy was on track to build a wood-to-electricity facility near Enon Grove in Heard County, Ga. Residents voiced strong protest, however, and now the site has been moved to LaGrange, Ga. In September of 2008, Green Hunter Energy bought a 14 MW Telogia, Fla. power plant. Just five months later, they’ve sold the plant to Multitrade Biomass Holdings, LLC in order to improve their liquidity position.
While the best laid plans of these facilities have gone awry, other companies are emerging as solid participants in the field. Multitrade is one of the many companies expanding, and this may be due to their long experience in the industry (The company opened what was the largest stand-alone wood-fired power plant in June 1994 in Hurt, Virginia). Multitrade is working on multiple power plant projects planning to extend their reach beyond Virginia to Georgia and Florida.
Since the beginning of 2009, new bioenergy announcements are defying gravity and taking flight once again. Wood pellet plants have been announced for Stone County, Miss. (where Piney Woods Pellets will produce 50,000 tons/year), DeKalb County, Ala. (where Lee Energy Solutions LLC will produce 75,000 tons/year), and Camden, Ark. (where Phoenix Renewable Energy plans to use 700,000 tons of wood per year to make pellets; they also plan to build three more plants across Ark.). Dailey Wood Products has just announced a new pellet facility on Bolon Island, Ore. as well.
Other notable additions include the announcement of the first projects from ADAGE, a joint venture between Duke Energy and AREVA to build biomass power plants. ADAGE and Energy Northwest have reached a preliminary agreement to develop 50 MW plants in Wash., Ore., Mont. and Idaho that would convert wood waste from the timber industry into electricity. The plan calls for the first of these plants to be operational as early as 2012.
Right now, the bioenergy market is being propelled forward by wood pellets and electricity generation. The majority of wood pellets produced in the U.S. are exported to Europe, to countries that have adopted the Kyoto Protocol and are burning the pellets in large scale commercial and industrial facilities. The wood-to-electricity sector, local and primarily small scale in the U.S., will be a growth industry as long as more and more states adopt Renewable Portfolio Standards.
Suz-Anne Kinney
Forest2Market: July 14, 2023
