Firing Up Hawaiian Biomass Facility

- by Chris D’Angelo, Feb­ru­ary 11, 2015, The Gar­den Island

Green Ener­gy Team, LLC’s $90 mil­lion bio­mass-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty in Koloa is now hot.

“They lit the boil­er and have start­ed mak­ing steam,” said Kauai Island Util­i­ty Coop­er­a­tive spokesman Jim Kel­ly, who is han­dling press inquiries for GET. “For the next prob­a­bly three to four weeks, they’re going to basi­cal­ly be pump­ing steam through it and clean­ing out the tubes.”

The com­pa­ny began test­ing the facil­i­ty for the first time last week and expects to have it con­nect­ed to the KIUC grid and pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty by April, accord­ing to Kelly.

The 6.7‑megawatt facil­i­ty is locat­ed near Knud­sen Gap and will pro­vide about 11 per­cent of the island’s elec­tric­i­ty — enough to pow­er 8,500 house­holds and replace about 3.7 mil­lion gal­lons of import­ed oil annu­al­ly. It is the first closed-loop, bio­mass-to-ener­gy plant in the Unit­ed States, and will rely com­plete­ly on its own sources of Kauai bio­mass wood chips.

In addi­tion to con­tracts to clear inva­sive albizia trees from sev­er­al loca­tions around the island, GET is in nego­ti­a­tions with the state Depart­ment of Land and Nat­ur­al Resources to pur­chase up to 15,000 tons of euca­lyp­tus and pine trees that were scorched in Kokee dur­ing fires in the sum­mer of 2012. Those trees are being cut down and removed as part of a major refor­esta­tion project on 700 acres of for­est reserve land.

DLNR Forestry Pro­gram Man­ag­er Sheri Mann said there are a few items the two par­ties are still nego­ti­at­ing, but her hope is to final­ize the con­tract while she is on Kauai lat­er this week.

“We’re explor­ing oth­er mar­kets, but believe me if we can make this work with Green Ener­gy we’re real­ly going to try,” she said.

If a con­tract is final­ized, up to 10 log­ging trucks per day would trav­el between the refor­esta­tion site and the pow­er plant. Mann said the DLNR is sup­posed to begin cut­ting trees next week and hopes to be well under­way with the project by the first week of March.

The DLNR Divi­sion of Forestry and Wildlife will hold a pub­lic infor­ma­tion meet­ing about the Kokee Area Restora­tion and Refor­esta­tion Project from 6 to 8 tonight at Keka­ha Ele­men­tary School cafeteria.

Once the dead trees are removed, the area will be refor­est­ed with native and non-inva­sive tim­ber species. The project could cost up to $4 million.

Gilles Lebbe, forestry man­ag­er at Green Ener­gy, pre­vi­ous­ly told The Gar­den Island that the 15,000 tons of wood from Kokee would account for about 17 per­cent of the plant’s annu­al needs.

Green Ener­gy Team was found­ed on Kauai in 2005 to devel­op a bio­mass-to-ener­gy project. In addi­tion to about 200 con­struc­tion jobs, it will cre­ate 39 per­ma­nent oper­at­ing jobs and sig­nif­i­cant work for sub­con­trac­tors and local ser­vice providers.

The company’s quest for trees, how­ev­er, has come with controversy.

On June of 2013, the Hawai­ian Homes Com­mis­sion reject­ed a pro­pos­al by GET to lease 2,143 acres in Ana­ho­la that belongs to native Hawai­ians under the Hawai­ian Homes Com­mis­sion Act of 1920. Had it been approved, the 20-year lease would have allowed Green Ener­gy to clear exist­ing albizia trees from the land and estab­lish a euca­lyp­tus tree plan­ta­tion to fuel its $90 mil­lion bio­mass-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty near Koloa. The Ana­ho­la com­mu­ni­ty stood firm­ly against the plan, claim­ing they had been kept in the dark and that Hawai­ian lands should not be leased to non-Hawaiians.