Census Bureau Releases Biomass Incinerator Data

- by Erin Voegele, Decem­ber 3, 2014, Bio­mass Mag­a­zine  

The U.S. Cen­sus Bureau recent­ly released new eco­nom­ic cen­sus sta­tis­tics on renew­able ener­gy, report­ing that rev­enues for elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion indus­tries that use renew­able ener­gy resources increased 49 per­cent from 2007 to 2012, reach­ing $9.8 bil­lion. In 2007, rev­enue was only $6.6 bil­lion. Bio­mass is among the four new­ly delin­eat­ed indus­tries addressed by the Cen­sus Bureau.

Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion released by the Cen­sus Bureau, the 2007 Eco­nom­ic Cen­sus includ­ed wind, geot­her­mal, bio­mass, and solar elec­tric pow­er under the broad “oth­er elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion” indus­try, under NAICS code 221119. By the 2012 Eco­nom­ic Cen­sus, those indus­tries had been bro­ken out sep­a­rate­ly, with the “oth­er elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion” indus­try lim­it­ed to only tidal elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion and oth­er elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ties not else­where classified.

Under the new cat­e­go­riza­tion sys­tem, bio­mass is list­ed under NAICS code 221117. The Cen­sus Bureau reports bio­mass pow­er gen­er­a­tion achieved $934.6 mil­lion in rev­enues accord­ing to the 2012 Eco­nom­ic Census.

Indus­try sta­tis­tics pub­lished by the Cen­sus Bureau indi­cate 105 bio­mass pow­er plants in the U.S. in 2012. Cal­i­for­nia had the high­est num­ber of bio­mass pow­er plants, fol­lowed by Vir­ginia. The annu­al pay­roll of these facil­i­ties is an esti­mat­ed $128 mil­lion, with total employ­ment report­ed at 1,647. The rev­enue per estab­lish­ment was more than $8.9 mil­lion, with rev­enue per employ­ee at $567,000. Rev­enue per $1 of pay­roll was $7.3 while pay­roll per employ­ee was $77,551. The num­ber of employ­ees per estab­lish­ment aver­aged 15.7. Accord­ing to the 2012 Eco­nom­ic Cen­sus, rev­enue per cap­i­tal was $3 and pop­u­la­tion per estab­lish­ment was near­ly 2.99 million.

Since 2012 was the first year the new bio­mass NAICS code was in use, com­par­isons are not avail­able for 2007 Eco­nom­ic Cen­sus data. Addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion on the Cen­sus Bureau’s bio­mass pow­er plant data is avail­able on the bureau’s website.