Northwest Renewable project switches from ethanol to power, citing easier financing

In Washington state, US Ethanol has announced that a planned $100 million Northwest Ethanol project will convert now to power generation, and will produce 24 MW from wood-waste, including wood chips and hog fuel.

The original project concept was to produce corn-based ethanol, but the new project will save $27.,5 million in capital costs and makes the project easier to qualify for federal economic stimulus money and other funding sources for biomass projects. The project, which will be built in Longview, will still ultimately include celluosic ethanol in its development, but as a later stage.

The company said in documents that it will issue of the Washington Economic Development Finance Authority tax-exempt economic development revenue bonds to finance the project.

Recent Washington state projects

Last month, the Tulalip Tribes and local dairy farmers, with a grant from DOE and USDA, have established a biogas project to remediate dairy waste streams and provide electricity to Puget Sound Energy and the grid. The federal agencies providing funding for the initial feasibility study, and state funds helped with the search for an anaerobic digester.

The resulting partnership between Tulalip Tribes, the Sno/Sky Agricultural Alliance, Northwest Chinook Recovery and Washington State Dairy Federation uses 30,000 of waste per day to generate heat and 2 MW of power. According to the DOE, US Tribal lands have the potential to meet more than 14 percent of America’s energy needs with wind power, and by using solar resources and bioenergy, could meet all of America’s energy needs. 5 percent of US land and 10 percent of energy resources (conventional and renewable) are on US Tribal land.

In June, EnergyCurrent offered a good recap of the boom-and-bust cycle in Northwest biofuels. The article traces the cycle back to the April 2007 launch of the 100 Mgy Imperium Renewables biodiesel plant in Grays Harbor, Washington, and the May 2007 launch of the 40 Mgy Pacific Ethanol corn ethanol plant in Boardman, Oregon.

The peak of the boom cycle was the opening of the Cascade Grain 113 Mgy corn ethanol plant in June of last year in Clatskanie. The bust commenced with the collapse in oil prices, which led to a bankruptcy filing by Cascade Grain at the beginning of 2009, while Imperium idled its plant in March.

Pacific Ethanol is in bankruptcy and said that it only has cash to fund operations in Boardman through this month. EnergyCurrent reports that biofuels industry execs say that the industry will rebound when the economy improves.

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