Where’s the wood to come from and who will buy the electricity?

Here’s video of what I asked at the recent VLCIA biomass event (6 Dec 2010) and the answers from the panel.

So there’s actually not any new study of wood sourcing (Brad Lofton told me after the meeting that the study had been “completed” after we met in June), and the study that exists is not publicly available. Someone from Sterling promised me after the meeting to redact the private parts of the wood sourcing study and provide the rest for public distribution. We’ll see.

Regarding my question about who will buy the electricity and whether we’ll end up like Plant Scherer, selling electricity to Florida while keeping the pollution here, the answer was:

“It will be in-state. We are in negotiations with several of the power companies in-state, including the Green Power EMC.”
So we don’t know where the wood will come from and we don’t know who will buy the electricity.

As I mentioned, the air quality permit application and the final air quality construction permit are available on the LAKE web pages. A video of the air quality permit hearing is available on LAKE’s vimeo channel. The question about an environmental impact statement starts at 00:32:11 in that video.

Here’s a discussion of what changed my mind about the biomass plant: the CO2 document that VLCIA alleged proved the plant is carbon neutral, when it does no such thing.

Thanks to Seth Gunning for nagging GA EPD into having an air quality permit hearing, and to Erin Hurley for taking a video of it. Video of John S. Quarterman from the VLCIA event is by Gretchen Quarterman of LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq