Two Covanta Biomass Power Plants in Maine Shut Down

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Covanta West Enfield Energy Center (West Enfield, Maine) and the Covanta Jonesboro station (Jonesboro, Maine) will no longer be providing a combined 55 megawatts (MW) of power to the grid.

The biomass power stations are owned by Covanta Energy Corporation (NYSE: COV) (Morristown, New Jersey), a subsidiary of Covanta Holding Corporation (NYSE:CVA) (Morristown).

In April, Industrial Info Resources researchers were told that West Enfield would continue operations only until it burned the rest of its remaining fuel. The power plant utilizes wood waste from forest operations, sawmills and thinnings, which are burned in a specialized boiler to produce power.

West Enfield houses one Mitsubishi Heavy Industries steam turbine. The unit is currently being drained. The facility is shutting down the distributed control system (commonly referred to as DCS) and placing the turbine into cold storage.

Jonesboro also houses one Mitsubishi Heavy Industries steam turbine.

The 24 employees at West Enfield and the 40 employees at Jonesboro were offered severance packages and were given the option to apply for other Covanta jobs.

The possibility of the units ever coming back online depends on market conditions. Current energy prices are not sufficient to sustain the costs of fuel supply and operations. In the past, Covanta has resumed operations of closed biomass facilities. The firm will continue to monitor market conditions.

The closure of these two plants affect the local logging and trucking industries. The Professional Logging Contractors of Maine issued a statement in January urging Governor Paul LePage and state legislators to prevent the closure of the biomass facilities. The group said the closures will affect 2,500 jobs in the state's logging industry. There are about 15-20 trucking companies that deliver wood products to West Enfield.

Biomass represents 25% of Maine's overall power supply and 60% of its renewable energy.

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