Under the agreement, Georgia will procure the biomass power from Rollcast’s Piedmont Green Power plant, located in Barnesville in the U.S. state of Georgia. The owner of the plant will retain all Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).

Georgia Power president and CEO Paul Bowers stated the new agreement is a part of company’s strategy to diversify its energy portfolio, thereby providing its customers with cost-effective renewable sources.

“Our customers want safe, clean, reliable and affordable energy, and that’s a commitment we will keep,” added Bowers.

The new agreement follows the company’s plans to obtain energy from two wind farms in Oklahoma with capacity totaling 250MW.

From Energy Business Review: http://biofuelsandbiomass.energy-business-review.com/news/georgia-power-enters-into-20-year-agreement-to-add-biomass-energy-of-535mw-150513

Located in Jamestown, North Dakota, Carbontec Energy Corporation has developed a process that uses the waste from sugar beets, wood chips and other biomass to make pig iron grade nuggets which are 96 percent iron and 2 – 3 per cent carbon.

The company says that this technology “. . . could substantially reduce the CO2, SOx, NOx and mercury emissions that are related to coke oven and blast furnace pig iron production, worldwide.”

The project’s construction phase is estimated to cost $60 million but once ramp up is complete the expected annual revenue is predicted to be almost $50 million, Bismarck Tribune reports.

Opening next year, the new manufacturing plant will be 80,000 square feet and the company expects to gradually expand production to 300,000 tons per year.

From Australian Mining: http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/new-iron-plant-uses-biomass-fuel

Los Angeles-based Rentech has drastically changed the scope of its project in Northern Ontario as it announced, May 2, it is switching gears by acquiring a shuttered Weyerhaeser fiber board mill in Wawa and and the Atikokan Renewable Fuels mill in Atikokan.

Plans to convert a former Domtar mill in White River into a fuel refinery have been dropped. To make this happen, Rentech had to acquire a deep-pocketed partner in Georgia-based Fulghum Fibre, a leader in wood chip processing services.

The Atikokan mill, owned by Ed Fukushima and Larry Levchak of Thunder Bay, is undergoing a conversion to make wood pellets to feed the nearby Ontario Power Generation power station.

The Wawa mill will be converted to a wood pellet operation. In addition, Rentech has struck a long-term contract with Canadian National Railway to ship pellets from Wawa to the Port of Quebec, presumably for international customers.

From Northern Ontario Business: http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/Industry-News/forestry/2013/05/Rentech-drops-woody-jet-fuel-for-wood-pellets.aspx

The plant — reconfigured to burn biomass, or waste wood products, instead of coal — currently is testing equipment. It is expected to be commercially online within two weeks.

The station will produce 51 megawatts of electricity when operating at full capacity, enough to power about 12,750 homes. The plant will have 30 employees with a combined annual payroll of $2.8 million, and provide thousands more dollars each year to the town in taxes.

Town officials signed off on a special-use permit for the project in 2011 after voicing concerns about truck traffic delivering wood products to the plant daily.

Dominion officials are confident a plan to restrict truck traffic to two routes to and from the plant will mitigate impact on town neighborhoods. Some Town Council members, though, are reserving judgment.

From The News & Advance: http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/article_6e069310-b2d8-11e2-b065-001a4bcf6878.html

Woody biomass, including wood pellets, is one energy source that has attracted both much attention and investments in a number of countries on the European continent. With limited domestic wood raw-material sources, countries such as the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands have increasingly relied on the importation of industrial wood pellets to reduce the usage of coal at some of their power utilities. The relatively high costs for wood pellets in Europe have resulted in increased interest in importing pellets from British Columbia and the southern states of the US where wood raw-material costs are lower than in Europe.

A record volume of 3.2 million tons of pellets was exported from North America to Europe in 2012, according to the North American Wood Fiber Review (www.woodprices.com), which compiles and publishes pellet trade volumes based on surveys of pellet exporters and customs data in North America and Europe, each quarter. From the US South, shipments were up over hundred percent compared to 2011, while Canadian exports increased 25 percent year-over-year.

The expansion of pellet production has been particularly noteworthy in the US South where there have been 14 new pellet plants that are either new or planning to expand production in the coming year. Location and capacity of the new plants are reported in the latest issue of NAWFR.

From Forest Business Network: http://www.forestbusinessnetwork.com/27490/exportation-of-wood-pellets-from-north-america-to-europe-reached-a-new-record-of-3-2-million-tons-in-2012/

When the right technology is matched with the right setting, woody biomass can offset the costs of other fuel sources, especially fuel oil and propane. As of January 2013, 297 institutional facilities have been identified as operational. Since concluding the study the number of systems has continued to grow reflecting the dynamic changes occurring in this arena. More than two-thirds are in the Northeastern U.S. Fifty-nine percent are secondary schools. The remaining facilities are predominantly higher education buildings.

“Wood was the first energy fuel used by mankind,” says Endowment President Carlton Owen. “Still more than one-half of the people on Earth depend on wood for their basic heating and cooking needs. Yet, in developed economies wood isn’t just for subsistence, advanced wood combustion systems are part of stabilizing and even saving on energy costs while doing so using a locally-sourced, renewable fuel.”

The report is another result of the Woody Biomass Joint-Venture, a partnership between the Endowment and the USDA Forest Service. Information generated is being added to the most comprehensive wood-to-energy database in North America – www.Wood2Energy.org – which is also a product of the joint venture.

From Forest Business Network: http://www.forestbusinessnetwork.com/27504/wood-for-energy-use-in-schools-hospitals-and-other-facilities-growing/

“By continuing to work together to produce American made ‘drop-in’ aviation fuels from renewable feedstocks, we will create jobs and economic opportunity in rural America, lessen America’s reliance on foreign oil and develop a thriving biofuels industry that will benefit commercial and military enterprises,” Agriculture Secretary Vilsack said. “USDA is pleased to partner with the FAA in our quest to develop alternatives to fossil-based fuel, which is critical to reducing carbon emissions and protecting the environment.”

“Through the use of sustainable alternative jet fuels, we are showing the world that we can come together to solve our greatest environmental challenges,” said Transportation Secretary LaHood. “In his State of the Union Address, President Obama called on us to work together to reduce carbon emissions – developing these alternative jet fuels will do just that, while creating jobs and helping airlines save money on fuel.”

The new agreement, which includes partners from the commercial aviation sector, follows the initial success of the 2010-2012 “Farm to Fly” initiative. It also supports President Obama’s commitment to clean energy technology, energy independence and job creation and is part of USDA’s efforts to strengthen the rural economy. The federal government and its partners hope to support the annual production of 1 billion gallons of drop in aviation biofuel by 2018.

From Forest Business Network: http://www.forestbusinessnetwork.com/27260/usda-extends-agreement-to-promote-renewable-fuels-in-the-aviation-industry/

The number of new housing starts in the US has staged a spectacular comeback since September of 2012. The average number of housing starts (annualized) from January to August of 2012 was 729,000. In the final four months of the year (September–December), that number had climbed to 889,000, a 22 percent increase. In 2013, the number of starts has continued to climb; the January–February average was 914,000 (an additional 3 percent increase).

This surge in new residential construction caught the market by surprise. After the housing market crash and the resulting recession, most OSB manufacturers had scaled back production, closing many plants, delaying bringing new ones online and cutting shifts. As a result, current capacity is approximately two-thirds of pre-2008 levels. Throughout most of 2012, most analysts believed it would take until 2016 or beyond for the market to return to the historical average for housing starts (approximately 1.3 million units annually).

Due to capacity reductions, however, this bump in demand has not been met with sufficient supply. Since the beginning of the recession, six OSB mills in the South closed indefinitely, removing 2.35 billion square feet per year of capacity from the system. The remaining 20 mills, with a total capacity of 9.8 billion square feet, were running at 76 percent of capacity, or 7.4 billion square feet per year.

From Forest2Market: http://www.forest2market.com/blog/pellet-manufacturers-face-increasing-competition-from-osb-mills?utm_source=Forest2Fuel+Newsletter+Mar%2FApril+2013&utm_campaign=Forest2Fuel+Newsletter+-+Mar%2FApril+2013&utm_medium=email

German Pellets GmbH will begin work immediately on a $300 million plant in Urania that is expected to employ about 80 people directly and support more than 400 indirect jobs, officials with the company and Central Louisiana Economic Development Alliance announced Wednesday. The plant is expected to be operational in the spring of 2014.

“We are ecstatic about the decision by German Pellets to locate in Urania,” said Rick Ranson, vice president-major employers for CLEDA. “German Pellets is a premier company and this is an historic announcement, not only for Urania and LaSalle Parish, but also the entire Central Louisiana region.”

“Pellet consumption worldwide is on the rise, especially in Europe,” said German Pellets Chief Executive Officer Peter Leibold. “This means that the construction of large production capacities is necessary.”

Demand for wood pellets from the European power plant market for the generation of electricity has risen sharply, according to a company release. There is also increasing demand for the product to generate heat for private consumers and larger scale users such as schools and hospitals.

From The Town Talk: http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20130418/BUSINESS/304180018/German-company-open-wood-pellet-factory-Urania?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1

The company expects that the power produced from these plants will cater to the energy requirements of 30,000 to 50,000 homes in the state.

Meanwhile, it has secured the approval of the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) for its 30-year power purchase contracts with Florida Power & Light Company (FPL).

Commenting on the alliance, PSC chairman Ronald A. Brisé remarked that the contracts would provide job opportunities, save customers’ money, besides diversifying the state’s fuel supply. “System reliability will also be enhanced, and the contracts help defer the need to construct additional plants generated by fossil fuels,” said Brisé.

The company asserted that the plants will save nearly $90m of FPL’s customers over the plant lifetime. In addition, each plant will provide 140 direct and indirect jobs.

From Energy Business Review: http://biofuelsandbiomass.energy-business-review.com/news/us-ecogen-to-construct-three-biomass-plants-totaling-180mw-in-florida-100413