No Adage biomass plant in Hamilton County, Florida

According to Power-Gen Worldwide, Plans for biomass power plant ends:
The company still has a permit to build a 55 MW plant in Florida but there are no plans to start construction and the company is expected to let the permit lapse in June. Adage ended plans in 2010 to build another plant in Florida.

Why is Adage giving up on Hamilton County, Florida? Christopher Dunagan writes in Kitsap Sun:

Meanwhile, a similar project by Adage in Northern Florida also will not be pursued at this time, according to DePonty. That project has been fully permitted and was about to move ahead if only the electricity market had provided the financial incentive, he said.
Here’s the Florida air permit. Despite having that air permit and promising jobs, jobs, jobs Adage is apparently not going to build in Hamilton, County, Florida.

The source of the many stories on this appears to be John Downey’s article in the Charlotte Business Journal, 16 March 2011, Duke Energy biomass venture suspends operations, which is mostly about:

Adage, the joint venture of Duke Energy and Areva, has canceled plans for a biomass plant in Washington state and has suspended plans for any construction in the face of low demand for biomass energy.

Adage spokesman Tom DePonty says a number of factors left the three-year-old joint venture without a market for its product.

There is generally weak demand for power because of the recession, he says. The low prices for natural gas recently have made it the preferred alternative for new power plants. Poor conditions

And he says Duke and Areva had anticipated more movement by states and the federal government to mandate wider use of renewable energy.

The joint venture will continue, he says. But it has essentially ended all operations for the time being. “We don’t anticipate significant investment at this time while the market conditions are so poor,” he says.

Perhaps he’s disappointed that Lisa Jackson of the EPA says
Particulate matter is a killer. We know it results in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And EPA plans to do something about it. So Duke’s plan to make big bucks off of “renewable” carbon-debt sub-prime carbon-mortgage tree-burning didn’t pay off.

But beware. It’s not June yet.

-jsq