Low fossil fuel prices and shifting government energy policies have combined to threaten the future of Maine’s wood energy industry, along with hundreds of logging and trucking jobs that supply the state’s biomass power plants and pellet mills.
Maine is a national leader in renewable energy, and its vast forests provide low-grade wood that generates more than a quarter of the state’s electricity. But Maine’s free-standing biomass plants can’t run profitably without favorable wholesale electricity prices and state laws that offer above-market rates for renewable power. Today, both of those supports are eroding.
Wood energy is being hit from two directions. One blow is coming from a glut of domestic natural gas, used to generate half of New England electricity, which has lowered rates. It’s great news for utility customers, and it’s providing a new option for pulp and paper mills connected to Maine’s expanding natural gas pipelines. But it’s bad for biomass power.
At the same time, more stringent policies for renewable energy in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where most of Maine’s biomass power is sold, are making less-efficient plants ineligible for crucial rate subsidies.
Click below to read full story.