Georgia Biomass outlook is strong

http://www.theblacksheartimes.com/articles/2013/07/20/opinion/doc51e586eabc61e257532059.txt

World’s largest fuel pellet plant sees a bright future for renewable energy production here

By Robert M. Williams, Jr.

Published:Wednesday, July 17, 2013 4:06 AM EDT

The news came in early 2010 that Southeast Georgia would be home to the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for fuel to power Europe’s energy generating plants.

That our job-hungry area would be a focus for the renewable energy movement brought a flurry of welcome publicity. Then-Governor Sonny Perdue came for the groundbreaking of the $175 million Georgia Biomass plant later that year and, by mid-2011, the first of hundreds of truckloads of pine timber began rolling through the gates each week. Employing more than 80 people and indirectly creating hundreds more jobs, the Georgia Biomass plant has been a natural fit. This new industry needed our abundance of pine trees as a raw material, rail lines to ship the fuel pellets out and a nearby port at Savannah to send them on their way to Europe where the United Kingdom is leading the way on promoting the use of renewable energy sources.

The operation has not been without one or two hiccups. A wood dust explosion a year ago shut down production temporarily but, fortunately, injured no one. Today, Plant Manager Brad Mayhew is proud to say Georgia Biomass has not had a single lost-time injury on the job since opening over two years ago. The firm felt another kind of blow a few months ago, however, when RWE, one of Europe’s five leading electric and gas companies, and the owner of Georgia Biomass, announced they would not continue their focus on utilizing wood pellet technology, leading to fears the plant could be sold, or worse, shut down. Doomsayers around the area were quickly saying: “We knew it was too good to be true.”

But wait.

Georgia Biomass officials hosted a sit-down this week, to set the record straight for area political leaders and the press.

With demand far outstripping supply and Georgia Biomass’ entire production capability already sold through mid-2015, don’t expect this plant to go anywhere anytime soon.

“Last year, Georgia exported about a million tons of wood pellets,” said Georgia Biomass CEO James Roecker. “We did about 60% of that. By 2020, the Southeast will be shipping 6-7 million tons of pellets.”

In other words, there’s still lots of money to be made turning our tall pine trees into tiny pellets and Georgia Biomass plans to lead the way.

“This company is not currently up for sale by RWE, but we’ve had about 20 companies make inquiries if they ever do,” added Roecker.

All of this is good news for area businesses. Forest products have been a mainstay of this region’s economy for more than a century and Georgia Biomass has only further emphasized the impact of timber on so many of us.

Think about this. Last year Georgia Biomass purchased 54,000 truckloads of pine timber. Those trees came from within a 75-mile radius and put more than $40 million into the pockets of landowners, timber dealers, etc. The multiplier effect of gas purchases, trucks, tires and more means the impact of this plant represents hundreds of millions of dollars to this region.

The staggering number of trees consumed by this one plant often leads to the inevitable question: “How long can we continue to provide pine trees to meet this demand?”

The answer: As long as needed.

“Georgia is growing 20 million tons of trees more than are being harvested every year,” explains Georgia Biomass procurement forester Barry Parrish. “We’re only tapping 20 percent of the excess growth. There’s five million extra tons being grown just within our 75-mile radius.”

Eighty-five employees at GB are drawing paychecks. Hundreds, probably thousands, more are impacted by this new industry.

The sweet scent of pine chips lingers in the air around the Georgia Biomass plant.

And it smells like money.

• Robert M. Williams, Jr. is Editor & Publisher of The Times. Email: rwilliams@theblack­sheartimes.com.

Sundrop Fuels selects contractor for inaugural plant

http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/9189/sundrop-fuels-selects-contractor-for-inaugural-plant

By Sun Drop Fuels Inc. | July 12, 2013

Sundrop Fuels Inc., a privately-held advanced biofuels company, announced that it has engaged international engineering and construction firm IHI E&C International Corporation, a U.S. subsidiary of Tokyo-based IHI Corporation, as contractor of choice for its inaugural facility near Alexandria, La.

The combined commercial and demonstration plant will annually produce about 60 million gallons of finished gasoline from natural gas while providing the platform for Sundrop Fuels to prove its proprietary gasification technology for making renewable “green gasoline” from woody biomass.

The success of Sundrop Fuels’ integrated commercial and demonstration plant will put in motion the company’s plan to build a series of renewable gasoline “megaplants,” each producing more than 200 million gallons of drop-in cellulosic biofuel annually. Sundrop Fuels expects to eventually have four such facilities in operation, representing a combined production capacity of more than one billion gallons – a significant percentage of the total cellulosic advanced biofuels goal set by the nation’s Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).

“With IHI E&C’s talent and resources, Sundrop Fuels looks forward to formally breaking ground on the final stepping-stone toward becoming a major producer of affordable, drop-in biofuel,” said Sundrop Fuels CEO Wayne Simmons. “It has extensive experience and a long history of successful project execution in plants with similar configurations and process units.”

”We are very excited to be involved in this gas to gasoline commercial project that utilizes proven technologies for the conversion of natural gas, first to methanol, and then to gasoline,” said Glyn Rodgers, IHI E&C President.

Located one mile west of Alexandria in Boyce, Louisiana, Sundrop Fuels has begun site preparation on the combined commercial and demonstration plant, which will occupy approximately 100 of the 1,213 acres that the company purchased in February. Formal construction is scheduled to begin late this year, with operations expected to begin at the end of 2015.

Once powerful logging region getting back to its roots with biomass fuel source

http://www.sunherald.com/2013/07/09/4785036/once-powerful-logging-region-getting.html

Published: July 9, 2013

By Mike Lacy — The Journal of South Mississippi Business

 

South Mississippi has found itself on the edge of an industrial opportunity that could literally light a fire in its the economic engine and put it on the world stage for decades. Wood pellet manufacturing appears to be a nice fit for a region long known as a logging powerhouse. Proponets promise infrastructure renewal, employment opportunities, tangential small business growth and a clear conscious that comes from creating a long-term, self-sustaining, eco-friendly fuel for the world.

Trouble is, a lot of other people want a piece of the action, and some neighboring states may already be ahead in its plans to capitalize. In wood pellet manufacturing, companies take forest junk that doesn’t meet milling specifications and make it into what could be the next big not-really-so alternative fuel source.

“Other Southern states — Louisiana, Georgia and Florida — are on board and building wood pellets and ports to handle them,” said Ken Flanagan, community development director for the George County Board of Supervisors. “They are moving very quickly. Georgia may be a little ahead of the curve. It’s very obvious to us that this is a competitive business market. Our sister states are getting into this game.” But, he said that South Mississippi is “definitely on the forefront” of the battle.

“You’re going to hear about wood pellets for years to come.”

In late June, Green Circle Bio Energy, Inc., announced plans to build a $115 million wood pellet manufacturing plant in George County’s Industrial Park, which it says will create 126 full-time jobs and produce about 500,000 metric tons of pellets to be shipped to European markets. Construction of the plant on a 120-acre site is expected to begin this fall.

It was the second plant in five months to announce plans to build in the George County Industrial Park and one of four wood pellet producers to have considered George County as home for their plants. Gulf Coast Renewable Energy announced plans in March to build a 320,000 metric ton-plant that would create 40 jobs and 288 indirect jobs. But, so far, plans have not yet materialized.

Green Circle’s arrival has also spurred infrastructure development for the George County Industrial Park as well as the Port of Pascagoula to support the industry.

In April, the state House of Representatives and Senate authorized a borrowing bill that included $10 million for the Port of Pascagoula. The port will put the $10 million toward the development of a specialized facility to support the state’s wood-pellet industry.

Port Director Mark McAndrews said at the time of the announcement that the center will be built in a terminal in its Bayou Casotte east harbor and will have a conveyor system, storage silos and a ship loader for receiving and shipping wood pellets.

The total cost will be $28 million to $30 million. The port and the terminal’s operating partner will pay the balance after the state’s $10 million, McAndrews said.

When Green Circle was in negotiations with George County, it was also in negotiations with the Port of Pascagoula. “The port authority wanted to make sure we were on the same page as they were,” Flanagan added. “They have to act independently, but it was a good, open relationship.

“For us, keeping this inside Mississippi is very important,” he said. “If we produce it in Mississippi, we want to ship it out from Mississippi.”

The product

Wood pellets are a refined biomass fuel. By “pelletizing” residual forest waste, sawdust and used wood pallets, millions of tons of waste can be put to work for the economy while enhancing the environment. The process utilizes parts of trees that do not meet sawmill specs — like the trucks or the tops.

Biomass energy proponents say wood pellet energy is carbon neutral, largely because regrowth of vegetation was believed to recapture and store the carbon that is emitted to the air. But some environmental groups have questioned the simplistic claim arguing that it depends on how the fuel is harvested, from what forest types and what kinds of forest management are applied.

Wood pellets pose no soil or water contamination risks. The Mississippi Biomass Council also states that a typical wood pellet plant will produce 70K tons of pellets per year, enough to supply one 250 MW generating plant with 5 percent of its fuel as co-fired biomass.

Basically, the wood is processed, ground into a paste and squeezed into pellets. In doing so, the moisture content is reduced from 50 to 60 percent down to about 5 percent, making it dense, stable for long-term storage and easily shippable. There are no additives.

Why now?

Wood pellet manufacturing has been around for years, but what’s driving the market right now is a mandate to reduce carbon emissions from power plants in Europe by 2020. When mixed with traditional coal, wood pellets can burn at the same heat and rate, but with a reduced carbon emission.

But while Green Circle is the latest news, Enviva Pellets has been operating an industrial plant in Wiggins since 2010, replacing Piney Wood Pellets, which produced more for residential use.

Enviva owns one other plant in Amory (Monroe County) and a third plant is operated by New Biomass Energy in Quitmann.

Enviva Wiggins is a 150,000-ton wood pellet manufacturing plant. It operates 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

Elizabeth Woodworth, director marketing communications for Enviva, said the Wiggins site was the “right opportunity” and the “right combination.”

“It is a good business environment, has incredible forest resources that are robust and healthy for us and it’s also located near a deep-water port,” she said.

Enviva Pellets exports through the Port of Mobile and has no immediate plans to change.

Why here?

According to a study commissioned by the Mississippi Development Authority, forestland dominates the Mississippi landscape, covering about 65 percent of the state. This coverage provides an excellent woody biomass supply to support the bioenergy and biochemical industries. It is estimated that about 6.5 million dry tons of unutilized pulpwood and woody biomass residues are available for new bioenergy and biochemical development in Mississippi. In addition, annual timber growth exceeds harvests in the state by a ratio of 1:13:1, meaning that 1.3 units of timber are added to the state’s stocks for each unit harvested each year.

“This immediately struck me that here is an emerging energy market — there’s no better way to say it,” Flanagan said. “It will never be like coal or oil, but in the recycling energy market, wood pellets do not have a rival.”

Europe makes wood pellets as well, but its “wood basket” — the area of harvesting wood within a 50- to 70-mile radius — is not as big as it is in the certain areas of the United States. In choosing a potential site, manufacturers consider how many years one can harvest, replant and harvest again.

Green Circle President and CEO Morten Neraas said it was important in the process to have more trees growing than what are being taken.

“But you’ve got to have more than wood,” Flanagan said. “You don’t want to be too far away from the Coast.” And he said the combination of rail and highway transportation to the Port of Pascagoula put George County in a good position. Is it good for Mississippi?

Nash Nunnery with the MDA said it has been estimated that nearly 100 new jobs are created by a typical pellet plant, including plant operators and workers, loggers, landowners and truckers. Each plant requires delivery of up to 6,000 truckloads of wood biomass equating to around 2,500 truckloads of wood pellets to customers each year.

The latest figures from a 2010 report from the Mississippi Department of Employment Security found that biomass industry-related jobs, not just those involving the wood pellet industry, directly or indirectly employed nearly 187,000 Mississippians.

Woodworth said in addition to direct and in-direct jobs created, it also adds an incentive for forest owners to keep their forests intact “rather than using it for agriculture — or worse — developing into strip malls.”

She said her company “goes through the supply chain” to obtain the raw material — sometimes through sawmills and sometimes on private forestland.

“It (the industrial process) helps promote bio diversity and value to the forest owner,” she said. “Maybe that will help him decide to keep his forest a forest. Over history, we’ve seen direct a correlation.”

Pricing

Woodworth said that wood pellet relative cost is one of the lowest, second only to onshore wind sources.

“But because wood pellets uses current utility infrastructure, it saves the utility on capital costs to retrofit,” she said.

But while Europe is the company’s primary business partner, she hopes that domestic acceptance of biomass fuel sources and, in turn, domestic business will increase.

“In Europe, it’s not a political matter. It’s a given,” Woodworth said. “Here, it’s divisive. I’d love to see biomass take off. It’s good for the environment and it’s part of the puzzle to use.

“When we talk about the impact of Enviva, we don’t focus on the fact that it’s a new green economy,” Woodworth said. “We’re connected to managing jobs and getting the forest industry back on its feet.

“We’re excited to be in the South Mississippi business region,” she said. “ The area has high quality labor in manufacturing. “And what’s cool about Wiggins, is that this facility is part of a global energy future.”

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/07/09/4785036/once-powerful-logging-region-getting.html#storylink=cpy

RWE npower closes Tilbury biomass power station

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/05/rwe-npower-tilbury-biomass-power-station

The blow to the UK's renewables industry was welcome news to some green campaigners who argue biomass is unsustainable

Fiona Harvey and Natalie Starkey
The Guardian, Friday 5 July 2013 08.11 EDT 

 

The closure of the Tilbury biomass power station will result in the likely loss of 220 jobs. Photograph: Alamy

 

RWE npower is halting operations at its Tilbury biomass power station, with the likely loss of 220 jobs, in a blow to Britain's renewable power industry.

But some green campaigners welcomed the closure, which will take effect from the end of October, as they argue biomass use on a large scale is environmentally unsustainable.

The closure will also raise further concerns over the ability to "keep the lights on" as an increasing number of ageing power stations are taken out of service.

The German electricity generator blamed a lack of investment capacity and the difficulty in converting the plant – the world's biggest biomass power station, with a planned capacity of 750MW – to use wood, waste oil and other organic materials in place of coal.

Biomass investors have also been rattled by the government's planned changes in subsidies for biomass and other renewable forms of energy. Drax, Britain's biggest coal-fired power station, last year shelved plans for two new biomass power stations.

Tilbury has a complex history that closely reflects the developments in energy and environment policy over the past decade.

Originally a coal-fired plant, it fell foul of EU regulations intended to cut airborne pollutants such as sulphur, and was intended in 2008 to be gradually run down, with a closure date of 2015.

But in 2010, the station was given a new lease of life as RWE announced its intention to experiment with biomass, sourced from sustainable forests, energy crops and waste.

Last year, RWE applied for environmental permits that would have kept the plant open as the world's biggest biomass burner. The investment required would run to the low hundreds of millions of pounds, less than building a new power station but a sum that would require considerable confidence in the future of biomass, as coal is now at its lower price for years.

Now, the company has decided it has other investment priorities.

However, RWE is open to selling the power station to another operator, if a buyer can be found. The company is only mothballing the plant, not dismantling it.

Roger Miesen, chief technical officer at RWE Generation, said: "It is with regret that we are announcing the decision to halt the Tilbury biomass project. This decision has not been taken lightly. Tilbury remains a good site for future power generation. RWE still believes that biomass has a role to play in future power generation and will continue to progress options at strategic sites."

The closure has reopened debate over the future of biomass power generation in Britain.

The government supports biomass, as a low-carbon form of power generation compared with fossil fuels – the trees and plants used as fuel take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, so if they are regrown under environmentally sound conditions, burning them results in a net carbon saving as it displaces coal and gas.

However, that is not the whole story, according to many green campaigners. They point to problems with sourcing sufficient quantities of biomass, much of which has to be imported, and say that without strict regulations, growing trees and crops for biomass can lead to deforestation in developing countries. There are also concerns about the effects of the soot that comes from burning the organic fuel.

Ports Authority board to vote on Wilmington wood pellet facility

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20130528/ARTICLES/130529554/-1/sports01?Title=Ports-Authority-board-to-vote-on-Wilmington-wood-pellet-facility

By Adam Wagner
Adam.Wagner@StarNewsOnline.com

Published: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 5:54 p.m., Last Modified: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.

The N.C. Ports Authority’s board of directors will take a vote on one of two wood pellets facilities on Wednesday, even as the energy source comes under more heat.

Enviva’s facility at the Port of Wilmington will come to a vote on Wednesday, but the board will wait to vote on the International Wood Fuels facility in Morehead City until Secretary of Transportation Tony Tata can have more discussions with Gov. Pat McCrory. 

If the Wilmington project is approved Wednesday, its next step will be the Council of State because it involves the leasing of state land. The authority will not need the council’s sign-off on the Morehead City project, which involves state-funded construction on state property. 

Enviva, which has also built a pellet terminal in Chesapeake, Va., would build two concrete storage domes, rail and truck unloading stations and a ship loader/dock conveyor system at the Port of Wilmington. 

In the meantime, representatives of the Southern Environmental Law Center have been critical of the pellet projects, in part because of possible shifts in attitude across the Atlantic.

“That entire policy is under active consideration in Europe now,” said Derb Carter, director of the N.C. office of the Southern Environmental Law Center. “They’re examining the assumption that this is an energy path that they want to go down. There’s active meetings going on in the UK and in the EU, and if this market goes away, the state will have been involved in making major investments at the port that have no purpose.”

 

Danny McComas, the chairman of the Ports Authority’s board, said he can’t predict the future but is reassured by the Europeans’ investment in pellet plants.

In addition to the concerns about the pellets’ viability as an energy source, the Law Center raised questions about the Ports Authority’s transparency.

“In our view, if they’re going to be making decisions about a particular project and they know that in advance, then the public has a right to know what those topics will be and what will be considered at that meeting,” Carter said.

Public notices of the ports board’s teleconferences on Tuesday and Wednesday was provided by the Ports Authority, but they did not explicitly mention that the pellet projects would be discussed during those meetings.

Carter said he thinks the projects should have been the topic of a public hearing.

McComas said he’d be willing to talk with representatives of the organization about their environmental concerns after the agreements become finalized.

“After it becomes public that it’s been finalized, we can certainly talk to them,” he said.

Adam Wagner: 343-2096

On Twitter: @adamwagner1990

Dogwood Alliance launches campaign against logging for energy

http://www.mountainx.com/article/50340/Dogwood-Alliance-launches-campaign-against-logging-for-energy

By David Forbes on 05/29/2013 04:05 AM

From the Dogwood Alliance:

May 28, 2013 – Southern forests are being burned for electricity, and a new campaign announced today aims to put an end to it. Dogwood Alliance and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have launched “Our Forests Aren’t Fuel” to raise awareness of an alarming and rapidly-growing practice of logging forests and burning the trees as fuel to generate electricity

At the forefront of burning trees logged from Southern forests for electricity are some of Europe’s largest utility companies, including Drax, Electrobel and RWE. Rising demand by these companies has resulted in the rapid expansion of wood pellet exports from the Southern US. The American South is now the largest exporter of wood pellets in the world. Recent analyses indicate there are twenty-four pellet facilities currently operating in the Southeast, and sixteen additional plants planned for construction in the near-term. Market analysts project that annual exports of wood pellets from the South will more than triple from 1.3 million tons in 2012 to nearly 6 million tons by 2015. All of the South’s largest domestic utilities, including Dominion Resources and Duke Energy, are also beginning to burn wood with plans for expansion in the future.

“This rapidly expanding trend of burning trees for energy will both accelerate climate change and destroy forests,” said Danna Smith, Executive Director of Dogwood Alliance. “Southern forests not only protect us from climate change, but protect our drinking water, provide habitat for wildlife and contribute to our quality of life. We need these companies to stop burning trees for electricity and embrace a clean energy future that helps to protect, rather than destroy forests.”

“With the advancement of clean, renewable energy alternatives, the growing practice of burning trees for electricity is a major step in the wrong direction,” said Debbie Hammel, Senior Resource Specialist of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Our Forests Aren’t Fuel lets the public know about the extent of this ecological devastation and calls on utilities to end the practice. It’s an even dirtier form of energy production than burning fossil fuels, it destroys valuable southern ecosystems, and it isn’t necessary.”

Energy from burning trees – or biomass – has been widely promoted as a form of renewable energy along with technologies like solar, wind, and geothermal. Over the past two years, however, mounting scientific evidence has discredited biomass from forests as a clean, renewable fuel. Recent scientific reports document that burning whole trees to produce electricity actually increases greenhouse gas pollution in the near-term compared with fossil fuels and emits higher levels of multiple air pollutants. This fact, combined with the negative impacts to water resources and wildlife associated with industrial logging have discredited whole trees as a clean fuel source. But current European and U.S. renewable energy policies and subsidies encourage the burning of trees as a “renewable” source of energy for power generation, helping to facilitate the rapid increase in demand for trees from Southern forests to burn in power plants.

Consequently, a new industry is spawning in the South. Companies like Maryland-based Enviva, the South’s largest pellet manufacturer, are grinding whole trees into wood pellets to be burned in power stations in Europe while also supplying wood to domestic utilities like Dominion Resources. New evidence that Enviva may be relying at least in part on the harvesting of wetland forests has recently emerged. Georgia Biomass, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German utility RWE Innogy, is also manufacturing millions of tons of wood pellets annually to be burned in European biomass facilities.

“Our Forests Aren’t Fuel” organizers reveal the scope and scale of the growing biomass industry through a series of case studies on the campaign website that include wood pellet manufacturers, domestic utilities, and European utilities. Particular emphasis is placed on the following companies:

· Enviva - one of the largest manufacturers of wood pellets in the U.S. and Europe, with manufacturing facilities and partner facilities in Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia. The Bethesda, Maryland-based company has an annual production capacity of more than 590,000 tons. It also operates a deep water terminal at the Port of Chesapeake, which has the capacity to receive and store up to three million tons of woody biomass annually. Much of its product is sold and shipped to European utilities, like Drax. Leftover biomass “residues,” like tree tops and limbs, are sold to domestic utilities, like Dominion Resources.

· Drax – major United Kingdom-based utility that recently shifted focus from co-firing biomass in coal power plants to full conversion of its largest plant to biomass. Drax has begun building pellet mills directly through its wholly owned subsidiary Drax Biomass. In December, 2012, Drax announced it will build Amite BioEnergy pellet mill in Gloster, Mississippi, and Morehouse BioEnergy in Bastrop, Louisiana, to supply wood pellets for use in its power plants, with production set to begin in 2014.

· Dominion Resources – the Richmond, Virginia-based utility recently launched several biomass operations that could well rely on whole trees in the near future. Its 83 megawatt plant in Pittsylvania, Virginia, is one of the largest biomass power stations on the east coast. Dominion is also converting three existing peak power coal-fired power stations into full-time biomass-burning facilities. The utility currently sources much of its biomass material as “residues” from wood pellet manufacturers like Enviva that export the bulk of its product to European markets. Should the supply of these residuals become limited, Dominion’s operations could increasingly rely on burning whole trees.

Full case studies for companies driving the biomass industry can be found on the “Our Forests Aren’t Fuel” website, http://www.dogwoodalliance.org/campaigns/bioenergy/, along with recommended actions for those concerned about losing southern forests for electricity, and a list of more than 70 supporting environmental groups.

UK biomass plant exploded from Waycross wood pellets

http://www.l-a-k-e.org/blog/2013/05/uk-biomass-plant-exploded-from-waycross-wood-pellets.html

May 27, 2013

Explosions in Tilbury, England, explosions in Waycross: south Georgia wood pellet dust blowing up here and there and producing CO2 when burned there. Why is “the world’s largest wood pellet plant” a better use of Georgia foresters’ resources than solar farms, which don’t pollute and don’t explode?

Josh Schlossberg wrote for The Biomass Monitor 24 May 2013, Biomass Industry Plays With Fire, Gets Burned,

A massive fire raged inside wood pellet silos for RWE’s Tilbury Power Station in Essex, UK, on February 27, 2012. The biomass incinerator—the largest in the world at 750 megawatts—had just been converted from coal to woody biomass a month earlier. RWE claims no single cause can be attributed to the fire, but suspects that smoldering wood pellets triggered the dust fire.

In a recent editorial (apparently not online), Robert Farris Executive Director of the Georgia Forestry Commission, wrote that Georgia has nine wood pellet plants. He didn’t name them, but Biomass Magazine has a list of U.S. wood pellet plants, including these in Georgia (I added the City column):

Company	Plant	City	State	Feedstock	Capacity
Enova Energy Group – Gordon	Enova Energy	Gordon	GA	Softwood	550,000
Enova Energy Group – Gordon	Enova Energy	Warrenton	GA	Softwood	550,000
First Georgia BioEnergy	First Georgia BioEnergy	Waynesville	GA	Softwood	38,000
Fram Renewable Fuels LLC	Appling County Pellets LLC	Baxley	GA	Hardwood and Softwood	200,000
Fram Renewable Fuels LLC	Fram Renewable Fuels – Hazlehurst	Hazlehurst	GA	Softwood	500,000
Fulghum Graanul Oliver LLC	Fulghum Graanul Oliver LLC	Oliver	GA	Hardwood and Softwood	200,000
General Biofuels	General Biofuels – Georgia	Waynesville	GA	Softwood	440,000
RWE Innogy	Georgia Biomass	Waycross	GA	Hardwood and Softwood	825,000
SEGA Biofuels LLC	SEGA Biofuels LLC	Nahunta	GA	Softwood	150,000
Varn Wood Products	Varn Wood Products	Hoboken	GA	Softwood	80,000

That’s ten; maybe another has opened lately. Biomass Magazine lists RWE Innogy as in Savannah, but according to Georgia Biomass PR of 26 May 2011,

Georgia Biomass held its official ribbon cutting ceremony in mid-May at its new operation just outside Waycross, Ga., hosting dignitaries and officials from around the world at the opening of the world’s largest wood fuel pellet plant. The facility, scheduled to be at full capacity by this fall, can produce up to 750,000 metric tons annually.

 The facility is a venture of major German utility RWE and its bioenergy subsidiary, RWE Innogy. According to RWE Innogy CFO Hans Bunting, the Georgia Biomass project came in two months ahead of schedule and under budget. RWE COO Leonard Birnbaum noted the almost $200 million plant is only a small part of the $8 billion a year RWE invests worldwide, but is very important to the company, which is the world’s largest biomass buyer and biomass power producer. The company operates more than 50,000 giga watts of power capacity, “But the challenge is provide more of this energy sustainably,” he added.

A good portion of the plant’s output may be heading to RWE’s existing coal-fired plant in Tilbury, United Kingdom, which is being converted to biomass and would become the largest biomass-fired power plant in the world.

And less than a year later the Tilbury plant got fired up all right, burning and exploding using south Georgia wood. That February 2012 Tilbury explosion was after the Waycross plant exploded in June 2011. Teresa Stepzinski wrote for Jacksonville.com 21 June 2011, Explosion damages Waycross plant; no injuries reported

An explosion damaged the Georgia Biomass wood pellet processing plant near Waycross early Monday, crippling production at the factory that began operations a little more than a month ago.

No injuries were reported in the blast that occurred about 8 a.m. at the plant in the Waycross-Ware County Industrial Park about five miles west of Waycross off U.S. 82 and U.S. 1.

“It did extensive damage to the processing end. … They’ll probably be down an extended period of time,” Ware County Fire Chief Dennis Keen told the Times-Union.

An explosion here, and explosion there: pretty soon we might be wondering why we want “the world’s largest wood pellet plant” in south Georgia.

Georgia Biomass claims it’s carbon neutral, which we know isn’t true for biomass from trees. It was our local Industrial Authority making that very claim that convinced me as a tree farmer that biomass was a bad idea. They didn’t just try to pass off a stack of powerpoint slides as peer-reviewed research, they also, according to the VDT, made up a fake timeline. Lack of carbon neutrality is one of the reasons the VSU faculty senate voted to oppose that plant.

Fortunately, the Executive Director who tried to bring us that local biomass project is gone, and the Industrial Authority has since moved on to solar projects. But there’s still a wood pellet plant in Waycross, turning our local forests into fuel for a biomass plant in England, producing more CO2 and making climate change worse, affecting us back here that way, too.

When I paid my annual dues to the Georgia Forestry Association (GFA is a private organization not to be confused with the state agency Georgia Forestry Commission), I wondered whether Georgia tree farmers might find solar panels a better investment. I was told GFA is constantly talking to Georgia Power, so we’ll see.

Ever heard of an exploding solar panel? Me neither.

-jsq