Construction will begin in June on a biomass plant in Maricopa that will produce enough electricity to power 20,000 homes.
Hal Mitchell, CEO for Scottsdale-based Arbutus Bio-Energy, said Tuesday the plant will be operational in 2014 and employ 20 to 22 people.
Mitchell was one of the presenters at the Pinal Partnership’s first Renewable Energy Economic Summit and Conference, attended by 200 people, at the Mission Royale Golf Club in Casa Grande. The Pinal Partnership was formed in 2005 to bring together county leaders in business, government and nonprofits.
The biomass station, called Pinal Power, will be next to the existing Pinal Energy ethanol plant on the Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway. Construction of the biomass station was first announced in September 2010.
Mitchell said the plant will burn such biomass as agricultural waste, tree trimmings and nutshells, which he said are a type of wood, that would otherwise end up in landfills. Electricity produced at the plant will be sold to various utility companies in California, he said.
Mayor Anthony Smith said before Tuesday's city council meeting the plant would provide “good tax revenue for the city.”
“The co-location next to the ethanol plant will facilitate light manufacturing and other green industries to locate on a green campus,” he said.
Mitchell said the plant will burn wood instead of coal.“It will burn clean wood waste and make steam at an extraordinarily high pressure,” he said.
The Maricopa plant will have the capacity to burn 300,000 tons of biomass a year, Mitchell said, and Arbutus Bio-Energy has the option to build a second biomass plant in Maricopa in the next two or three years.
Mitchell said about 2 million tons of biomass, such as the kind the Maricopa plant will burn, is produced yearly in the Phoenix area.
Mitchell said Arbutus Bio-Energy has three other active biomass projects — two in California and one in Massachusetts.
Along with the 20 to 22 people that will work full time at the Pinal Power station, jobs will be created by the company that supplies the biomass waste to the plant, he said.
“Our goal with this facility is to be a good neighbor in Maricopa,” he said.
To burn fuel for power is very old tech,and I would believe that no other city would want this power plant due to the pollution it will make.Mayor Smith for once,please look out for ALL the citizens of Maricopa,like those of us who have respiratory problems..
Watch it as it explains what will face all in Maricopa. That is the major issue with this project!