Planned La Pine, OR Biomass Facility Hinges on Market

- by Dylan J. Dar­ling, March 17, 2015, Bend Bul­letin

A wood-burn­ing pow­er plant remains a pos­si­bil­i­ty for La Pine, with the city now tak­ing the lead on the project from Deschutes Coun­ty and the com­pa­ny behind it wait­ing for a change in the ener­gy market.

“It’s just been on hold due to mar­ket con­di­tions,” said Rob Broberg, pres­i­dent of Biogreen Sus­tain­able Ener­gy Co., based in Van­cou­ver, Wash­ing­ton. “And we plan on hold­ing out until we are able to mar­ket and sell power.”

The com­pa­ny must find an ener­gy buy­er to make the planned plant eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable, said Rick Allen, La Pine city manager.

“They need to find a pow­er com­pa­ny that wants to buy their pow­er,” he said. “…That’s real­ly the issue.”

The $75 mil­lion, 25-megawatt bio­mass plant would pro­duce enough elec­tric­i­ty to pow­er about 19,000 homes, Broberg said. The plant would burn wood — limbs and oth­er scrap left over after log­ging, debris from thin­ning projects and urban waste — to heat water, cre­ate steam and turn a tur­bine. Inter­est­ed pow­er com­pa­nies would like­ly be in Cal­i­for­nia, where the state requires an increas­ing per­cent­age of its pow­er to come from “green­er” sources such as bio­mass, wind and solar.

Biogreen has been con­sid­er­ing a bio­mass plant in La Pine, which is sur­round­ed by for­est, for more than five years. The com­pa­ny has held land and build­ing per­mits for the plant with Deschutes Coun­ty, but those have expired.

Tom Ander­son, Deschutes Coun­ty admin­is­tra­tor, said future deal­ings will be with the city of La Pine. The plant would be in the La Pine Indus­tri­al Park, which was coun­ty-run and pre­dat­ed the incor­po­ra­tion of the city in 2007.

“Now that the city is incor­po­rat­ed, the coun­ty felt it was impor­tant to give the city a lit­tle more self-deter­mi­na­tion as to what kind of projects go into the (indus­tri­al) park there,” Ander­son said. Last fall the coun­ty and city reached an agree­ment for the city to man­age the remain­ing land in the 320-acre park while the coun­ty still owns the prop­er­ty. About half of the acres are still available.

The pow­er plant would sit on 19½ acres, Broberg said. About 20 peo­ple would work at the plant and anoth­er 65 or so would work in the for­est, gath­er­ing wood to burn. Giv­en the num­ber of thin­ning projects in the forests around La Pine aimed at reduc­ing the chance of large wild­fires, he fig­ures there should be a steady sup­ply of wood.

While not help­ing any group opposed to the planned plant in La Pine, Mike Ewall, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Penn­syl­va­nia-based Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, said his non­prof­it has helped stop oth­er bio­mass projects in Ore­gon and around the coun­try. He argues that bio­mass plants are “very pol­lut­ing and very inefficient.”

“Any­thing that burns any­thing is not clean ener­gy,” he said.

The Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work has been field­ing ques­tions from peo­ple about a poten­tial bio­fu­els plant in Lake­view. The plant, pro­posed by Red Rock Bio­fu­els in Fort Collins, Col­orado, would turn bio­mass into jet fuel and diesel, which would be shipped by train. The ques­tions include how much air pol­lu­tion the plant would cre­ate and how safe the rail­way ship­ping would be.

Call­ing the plan for bio­mass in La Pine a “very valu­able project,” Biogreen’s Broberg said the pow­er plant would put off less smoke than wood burned in open air.

Along with secur­ing a pow­er buy­er for the planned La Pine plant, hur­dles left for Biogreen to clear include water and labor. The plant would use about 300 gal­lons per minute on the hottest days of the year. Allen said that’s how much the whole city of La Pine cur­rent­ly uses on a hot day. City offi­cials would want to be sure the city sys­tem could sup­ply enough water to the plant, as as well as to cur­rent and future customers.

“The city wants to make sure that we have enough water for com­mer­cial expan­sion,” Allen said. La Pine draws ground­wa­ter from wells to pro­vide water for the grow­ing city. The cur­rent water sup­ply is ample, but not endless.

In 2011, Biogreen faced a labor union com­plaint say­ing the com­pa­ny want­ed to avoid using union work­ers to build the plant. Broberg said the com­pa­ny has a ten­ta­tive agree­ment with a union and the issue would be resolved if the plant goes ahead. Broberg declined to name the union.

Advo­cat­ing for the planned bio­mass plant in La Pine, Roger Lee, exec­u­tive direc­tor for the Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment for Cen­tral Ore­gon, said it would bring jobs to La Pine. But Biogreen has a long way to go before building.

“There are lots of com­plex­i­ties,” Lee said.