Ranked third in the nation in terms of timberland acreage, Alabama appears to be making its move in the “green” energy sector. The state’s abundant, sustainably managed wood basket (nearly 70% forested), cost-efficient waterway transportation, and skilled labor pool backed by an Alabama Industrial Development Training (AIDT) program all contributed to the decision to locate Dixie Pellets LLC, one of the world’s largest solid bio-fuel plants, in Dallas County.
Dixie Pellets is designed to produce 520,000 metric tons per year of wood pellets, an alternative energy source in great demand particularly in the European Union where mandated air emission standards have been adopted to reduce predicted global warming trends in compliance with the Kyoto Accord. Wood pellets are a carbon neutral bio-fuel valued as a heat source for commercial and residential heating systems, and as a feedstock to fire or co-fire power generation plants. The 2005 EU Biomass Action Plan called for member nations to more than double electric power generated from biomass from 4% or 69 Mtoe (million tons of oil equivalent) in 2005 to 150 Mtoe by 2010. Wood Resource Quarterly reports 2008 worldwide pellet production approached 10 million metric tons per year and some experts are predicting this will double in the next several years.
Although the pellet fuel industry began more than 30 years ago, it is just now coming into its own largely driven by European demand that has spilled over to U.S. producers and more recently to growing U.S. demand to become more energy independent. Among the alternative energy sources available, pellet fuel offers perhaps the fastest route to achieving that goal because the technology is already developed and conversion is cost effective. Technology developments now allow power plants to use pellet fuel as a co-fire feedstock with coal or as a stand-alone feedstock. And it has the advantage of being less capital intensive than other alternative energy sources since modifications to existing power plants and infrastructure can achieve emissions compliance, and it uses a resource that is renewable and sustainable.
Dixie Pellets LLC is built adjacent the Alabama River, on a 25 acre parcel that was a state docks grain facility. Today, vacant but still standing grain silos offer silent testimony of this region’s past agricultural prosperity and foreshadow a promising new economy built not on grain or cotton, but on wood energy. The industrial site was leased from the state to promote rural economic development.
All of Dixie Pellets’ production is pre-sold through multi-year contracts with a number of utility companies and brokers in Europe, thus guaranteeing ready markets in the foreseeable future. Finished product is sold in bulk form only. Material is stored in silos, conveyed to the loading dock and loaded into hopper barges for transport to Theodore Marine Terminal where it is loaded onto ocean-going ships.. (more...)