Ensyn Corp., a Canadian company that creates fuels from forestry biomass, is exploring potential sites in Maine to locate a biorefinery capable of transforming 400 tons a day of low-grade wood into fuels that could be a competitive alternative to heating oil and natural gas.
The Portland Press Herald reported that Ensyn already is supplying heating fuel to Bates College and has a $70 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build a biorefinery in Georgia. It also is a 50% partner in the Cote Nord 10.5-million-gallon-per-year biocrude production facility in Port-Cartier that is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017.
“Maine would be an ideal place to locate a facility,” Lee Torrens, president of the subsidiary Ensyn Fuels Inc., told the Press Herald.
Torrens said the company would need enough long-term contracts to create approximately 7 million gallons of annual demand for its biofuels to support a facility in Maine.
If Ensyn proceeds with siting a biorefinery in Maine it would advance one of the top goals of the Biomass Commission created by the 127th Legislature to identify and create new markets for low-grade wood and waste wood left over from pulp and paper manufacturing and sawmills as a way of boosting Maine’s $8.5 billion forest products industry, which has seen a loss of $1.3 billion in total economic impact due to closures at five paper mills and downsizing at Verso’s mill in Jay in the last three years.
