Pownal Biomass Plant Spurs Debate

Pownal Biomass plant spurs debate

By Meghan Foley

Posted:11/26/2010 02:37:43 AM EST

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A biomass facility is proposed for the former Green... (Gillian Jones/North Adams Transcript)

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Friday November 26, 2010

North Adams Transcript

This is the first of a four-part series.

POWNAL, VT. -- A proposed 29.5-megawatt biomass-burning power plant and wood-pellet manufacturing facility at the former Green Mountain Race Track has people on both sides of the Vermont and Massachusetts border up in arms trying to slow down the project’s timetable.

At the same time, some have welcomed the project as an opportunity to create jobs, grow the local and regional economy and allow for proper management of forests in the region.

Taking the brunt of the controversy has been the project’s developer, Beaver Wood Energy LLC, a Delaware limited liability company whose principals say they want to add to Vermont’s renewable energy supply and provide a market for low-quality wood.

While protests at the former race track and anti-biomass forums have grabbed most of the headlines, Thomas Emero, managing director of development and operations for Beaver Wood, maintains that the project is a very important one for Vermont residents and the entire region.

"We have a dependence on foreign oil. We have a need for a diversified electricity portfolio," Emero said during an interview last week. "Biomass power plants are just part of the overall answer -- but a very valuable part."

According to Emero, the former race track is an excellent site for the facility because of its access infrastructure, including water, sewer,

a nearby state highway and rail service and the ability to connect into the electrical transmission system.

The proposed power plant would burn wood that would otherwise not be used, including whole tree chips, bark, and mill waste, including limited sawdust, according to the project’s Act 248 application filed with the Vermont Public Service Board on Oct. 25.

Officials have repeatedly stated the power plant would not burn construction and demolition debris. Burning so-called "C & D" waste is a major concern of many opponents.

The pellet manufacturing facility would use logs to produce pellets that would be a combination of about 70 percent mixed hardwood, 30 percent softwood, and 0.5 percent ash, which would burn efficiently with fewer air emissions, the application states.

At least 80 percent of the wood would come from within a 50-mile radius of Pownal, company officials have said.

"What a biomass plant does is it takes the tops of trees, limbs, branches and waste that is normally harvested in a logging operation, and gives them a market," Emero said. "The pellet facility, likewise, will create a market for low-quality trees that are of a species, or of a nature that they could be diseased or broken and have no higher value in them."

Market needed?

Williamstown, Mass. resident Averill Cook, president of Biomass Commodities Corp. and Wendling Biomass Consulting, said biomass power plants are not only a valuable part of the nation’s quest to increase its renewable energy load, but also are an asset to helping the economy, the forest-products industry and forest management.

"The opportunity as I see it for a biomass plant in Pownal is a very nice fit for the natural resources around here," he said.

Cook said that during his 57 years living on his family’s property, he has basically "farmed" the woods, removing wood products that are the equivalent of weeds in a garden, and he maintains that the woods are better now than when he began in the industry 35 years ago.

"The more management you do, the faster things grow," he said. "It doesn’t damage the woodlands, but helps them."

The difficulty is finding a market for those "weeds," he said.

He said there is no doubt in his mind there is enough biomass in a 50-mile radius to support the Pownal power plant, and much of that land is under forest management.

In addition, there will soon be a need to dispose of diseased maple trees once the Asian long-horned beetle takes hold in the region, Cook said.

"Right now, the biggest threat to New England is the Asian long-horned beetle," he said. "We have not been successful in curtailing things like that. If that takes hold of New England, we will not have a place to dispose of the maple trees. It will be devastating."

Jobs

Aside from creating a market for low-quality wood, the biomass power plant and pellet manufacturing facility would create much-need jobs for the region, Cook said.

"It will bring good technical jobs of operating the plant and reinforce the supporting industries, including welding and machine shops to supply spare parts," he said.

In its Act 248 application, Beaver Wood states that construction of the power plant and wood-pellet manufacturing facility from 2012 through 2013 would create about 960 jobs in Vermont, more than 770 of which would be in Bennington County.

The operation of the power plant and wood-pellet manufacturing facility from 2014 forward would create a total of 140 jobs in Vermont, with over 120 being in Bennington County, the application states. Forty-five of those jobs would be at the power plant and pellet manufacturing facility, which would have a combined annual payroll of $3.4 million, according to the application.

It also states that the two facilities would purchase about $18.2 million in forest products from local loggers annually.

"Right now, the forest products industry is dying rapidly," Emero said. "There is a small market for some forms of timber -- basically saw logs and veneer logs -- and a smaller market for other products."

Beyond the jobs, the two facilities would boost Pownal’s tax revenue by well over $500,000 annually, according to Beaver Wood estimates..

In its Act 248 application, the estimated assessed value of the power plant and pellet manufacturing facility is about $98.1 million, which would result in Pownal receiving $573,100 in property taxes based in the town’s fiscal 2011 tax rate.

The facilities aren’t expected to affect property values, other than the few residential properties located "very near" to the facilities, the application states.

"When an integrated facility is well-designed (that is, takes reasonable efforts to minimize negative impacts), the adverse impacts on property values are small (generally less than 5 percent) and very localized (usually felt only within 500 feet of the land use)," the application states.

The developers

Emero, formerly a shareholder, and general counsel and director of renewable energy development for GenPower Services LLC, is one of Beaver Wood’s founding partners. He is joined by William Bousquet, formerly senior vice president of engineering and construction at GenPower; Ted Verrill, who has been involved in financing and procurement of nuclear, oil, natural gas, solar, geothermal and biomass facilities over the past 25 years; Bechtel Development Co. and Bechtel Power Corp.

While Bechtel Development is part of a joint development arrangement with Beaver Wood Energy to develop biomass projects in Pownal and Fair Haven, Vt., outside of Rutland, Bechtel Power would complete the design engineering for the projects and build them, according to Beaver Wood.

The company is proposing a biomass power plant and pellet manufacturing facility similar to Pownal’s for Fair Haven and has filed applications with the Vermont Public Service Board seeking a certificate of public good (under Act 248) for the projects.

Beaver Wood is also seeking preliminary approval from the board to begin limited construction activities at the sites before the end of the year. The reason for the rush, according to Beaver Wood, is that it must start construction on the plant to be eligible for federal grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Emero has said the grant could be as high as $52.5 million for the Pownal plant alone and without it, securing the necessary funding would be "difficult."

Included in the estimated $250 million price tag for the Pownal plant is the latest equipment and technologies to make it "state-of-the-art" and the cleanest in the country, according to Beaver Wood officials.

Bousquet, managing director of Beaver Wood, said the company hasn’t yet locked into a supplier for the necessary plant components, and he was hesitant to name any specific products being considered so as not to tip-off suppliers before negotiations with them are concluded.

However, standard equipment in new biomass power plants compared to the ones of a generation ago include boilers that can generate steam at 950 degrees Fahrenheit and up to 1,500 pounds of pressure, feed-water heaters designed to accommodate four stages of heating and axial steam turbines, Bousquet said.

"A combination of all these things put together make a plant more efficient," he said.

In its application Beaver Wood states the power plant’s efficiency would be significantly increased by using thermal energy for the pellet dryer in the manufacturing facility.

Cook said the most efficient application of burning biomass is to use it for heat and electricity, which is done in Europe, and on a smaller scale at Williams College in Williamstown and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams.

"Unfortunately our infrastructure and the way we generate electricity in the United States is very inefficient. I’d be surprised if any power plant has 30 percent efficiency," Cook said.

Emero said the power plant’s biomass-fed boiler would "superheat" water into steam that has high pressure and a high temperature, and that steam will then turn turbines that are connected to generators to create electricity.

Air emissions

Beaver Wood’s Act 248 application states that air emissions from the power plant and pellet manufacturing facility would face much stricter permitting requirements than older such facilities.

"The project’s emissions will be amongst the lowest, if not the lowest, at the time of our application, in the country for projects of this type," the application states.

Emero said the air emissions report was still being prepared, with the final report expected next week.

Richard Ney, director of eco-management services at Sebesta Blomberg & Associates, a Minnesota-based company that specializes in design permitting and upgrades to power plants, said that when a new technology becomes available for controlling air emissions and plant efficiency, it usually becomes the standard. Sebesta Blomberg & Associates is not involved in Beaver Wood’s Pownal or Fair Haven projects.

Ney, who has 20 years’ experience in the field, said biomass-burning plants often use electostatic precipitators to control particulate matter in their emissions. The device is a big box in which electrified gas flows through and charges the particulates so they stick to metal plates, he said.

He said the technology is "90 to 95 percent efficient."

By federal law, biomass power plants must also control nitrogen oxides, which can be done by constructing nitrogen oxide burners. The burners control the flame temperature, he said. The process becomes more effective with the addition of a flue gas recirculator, which circulates the combustion and exhaust through the burner zone as a way to redistribute temperature, he said.

Carbon monoxide, which is generated from a plant’s boilers, can be mitigated with more complete combustion of the biomass, which can done with combustion control technology, he said.

Cook said most air pollution in Berkshire County and nearby southern Vermont comes from wood smoke, and a biomass power plant is far different than a fireplace.

"It’s tremendously more advanced than a wood stove. It bothers me people don’t realize that," he said.

Part two of this series will explore the opposition to the project and arguments against the Pownal plant.

To reach Meghan Foley,
e-mail .