New Biomass Power Facility on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula?

- Sam Ali, Jan­u­ary 8, 2015, ABC 10

The Keweenaw Renew­able Ener­gy Coali­tion is one step clos­er to help­ing bring a solu­tion to the ener­gy cri­sis in the Cop­per Country.

Last night, KREC gath­ered experts in the log­ging and tim­ber indus­tries for a bio­mass work­ing ses­sion to dis­cuss the future of a pos­si­ble 11-megawatt bio­mass elec­tric plant.They were joined via Skype by Asko Ojanie­mi, the head of an ener­gy effi­cien­cy solu­tions com­pa­ny in Fin­land. The plan is to bring in his team to design a plant that match­es the needs of the area.

KREC’s trea­sur­er says one of the big­ger deci­sions will be the loca­tion of the plant.

“We can offer our opin­ion on whether a par­tic­u­lar site has val­ue where there is more com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fit there. But we would like to leave that dis­cus­sion to those land own­ers and the peo­ple who can make cer­tain aspects of the plan hap­pen. We’d like to push that out to the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el and let that deci­sion even­tu­al­ly be made at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el,” Lock­wood said.

North­ern Hard­woods in Atlantic Mine and Rock­wood Con­cepts in Mohawk have been dis­cussed. Lock­wood says North­ern Hard­woods would be the ide­al location.

“The site in Atlantic Mine is bet­ter for a num­ber of rea­sons. It’s clos­er to the pop­u­la­tion. There’s 36,000 peo­ple in Houghton coun­ty and only 2,000 in Keweenaw coun­ty. So sit­ing that clos­est to the fuel assets and the com­mu­ni­ty is the smarter thing to do prob­a­bly,” said Lockwood.

The next step will be to get the experts togeth­er with the util­i­ty com­pa­nies to dis­cuss imple­ment­ing the new assets on the elec­tri­cal grid. That meet­ing is set to take place by mid–February.