NH Teams with Spain’s Gestamp to Push Bioenergy

Concord-based Clean Power Development LLC has signed a partnership agreement with Gestamp Biomass — a division of Gestamp Renewables of Madrid, Spain — to develop, finance and operate biomass energy projects across the Northeast, including a project in Berlin that is expected to generate some 29 megawatts and several hundred jobs, according to a report in the New Hampshire Business Review.

“The Berlin project is fully permitted: it is shovel-ready,” Bill Gabler, project manager for the Berlin biomass site, told NHBR.

The agreement covers activities in the six New England state as well as New York and Pennsylvania.

”We are the conduit for Gestamp’s entry in to the North American and Northeast biomass market,”

Clean Power’s Berlin plant will use wood biomass for combined heat and electricity production.

The company is building its facility on an 11-acre site on the Androscoggin River near Berlin’s wastewater treatment facility several miles from the city’s downtown.

The city of Berlin itself might also benefit from the plant, which could provide energy for a district heating system, proposed last October.

During construction, slated to begin this fall, some 200 to 300 jobs will be created, the NBHR report stated. When the plant is up and running sometime in late 2011, 23 workers will be employed at the facility, according to Gabler.
An additional 100 to 150 jobs, such as foresters and lumber workers, will be added in the fuel supply chain,

According to Gabler, available transmission capacity is adequate to support the  Berlin project, Noble Environmental Energy’s wind project, and Laidlaw Energy’s wood-burning plant at the site of the former Fraser Papers mill in Berlin.

Clean Power also has another combined heat and power biomass project in the southern New Hampshire town of Winchester in the works. The permitting process on that project is expected to begin in the fall.
Others could follow in the future based on the partnership with Gestamp, which reported $6 billion in revenues last year.