State regulators have approved a $13 million taxpayer subsidy to reopen or keep open several biomass electricity generation plants in the state.
Earlier this year, lawmakers approved a plan to use surplus state revenues to prop up the biomass industry, and the forest-products workers who depend on it, by supplementing the prices the plants get when selling electricity on the regional grid. Now the state Public Utilities Commission has chosen the winning bidders.
But the three-member panel also seemed a bit uncomfortable with assigning taxpayer funds to electricity generators.
“In its most general purpose this is an employment action, an industry lifeline, however momentary, couched in the framework of an energy purchase,” says Commissioner Bruce Williamson.
Williamson says the money might be better spent on other initiatives that could produce more jobs.
The two-year contracts require documentation that permanent jobs are preserved or created and that the plants use Maine-sourced fuels. Two companies won the bids to provide the subsidized energy from a total of four plants.
Larry Richardson, CEO of Re-Energy Holdings, says the company’s winning bid is a lifeline for plants in Fort Fairfield and Ashland, supporting 50 direct jobs and about 200 indirect jobs for the Aroostook County forest-workers and truckers who provide a million tons of fuel annually.
“This contract award is vital to keeping these facilities up and operating. Really the whole region wins with this, so certainly we’re excited about that,” he says.
The other winning bidder, Stored Solar, is a subsidiary of a French-based company called Capergy, which recently bought biomass plants in West Enfield and Jonesboro. Before they were shuttered last spring, those two plants employed a total of 44 workers.
The new company has applied for federal permission to restart and sell electricity to the regional grid.