Positioned for Pellets

Biomass Power & Thermal
By Lisa Gibson January 05, 2012

With port and rail expansions under development, Maine is on the cusp of entering the wood pellet export market.


The Port of Eastport in eastern Maine will be prepared this month to export wood chips to Europe, extending that capacity to wood pellets soon thereafter. It’s a significant milestone, as the wood pellet export industry has been delayed in the Northeast U.S., despite the fact that it has immense freight advantages to Europe over many other global pellet production hot spots, even the Southeast U.S.

The Northeast has only three deepwater ports, all in Maine and none with the infrastructure to handle wood pellets. Until now. All three of those ports are gearing up in some way to descend on the pellet export market, cashing in on numerous advantages, not the least of which being proximity to Europe’s growing demand.

“Back in ’08-’09, we saw on the horizon this was going to be a market that was going to explode and we looked up and down the coast of the Eastern United States and said, ‘There’s an opportunity here,’” says Chris Gardner, executive director of the Port of Eastport.

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Dutch ports get ready for biomass boom

Industrial Fuels and Power
November 25th, 2011 by IFandP Newsroom

The increased focus on renewable energy and new Dutch government proposals that will see the use of some biomass mandatory in the country’s coal-fired power stations by 2022 is expected to lead to a boom in biomass traffic in Dutch ports such as Amsterdam.

Currently, Dutch ports handle around 1.5Mt of biomass annually, but due to the forecast growing demand for the alternative energy source in North European countries, the figure is expected to increase to about 13.5Mt by 2020.

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Great Lakes ports prepare for biomass exports

Biomass Power & Thermal
By Matt Soberg October 12, 2011

John Elliot, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corp. of Erie County, kicked off BBI International’s Northeast Biomass Conference & Trade Show Oct. 12 with in-depth discussion about the opportunities for worldwide export of biomass through the Great Lakes.

“With Pennsylvania having over 14 million acres of forestlands and studies showing 6 million tons of biomass could be harvested sustainably each year, biomass caught our attention in a special way,” Elliot said. To realize those biomass export possibilities, the EDCEC is redeveloping two ports on Lake Erie in addition to inland railways to provide full transportation services for export purposes.

With relatively the same travel time to Europe from the Port of Baltimore, “the St. Lawrence Seaway provides a tremendous inland water way for export purposes,” Elliot said.

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CSX, Kinder Morgan team up for ethanol hub at Port of Tampa

Tampa Bay Business Journal
Date: Friday, September 16, 2011, 4:51pm EDT

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, CSX Corp. and the Tampa Port Authority finalized an agreement to bring ethanol into the Tampa market via the nation’s first ethanol unit train-to-pipeline distribution system.

TPA will build rail track and support infrastructure to handle 100-car unit train deliveries and a multi-product unit train offloading yard at Hooker’s Point.

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