An interesting debate is finally starting to surface about the issue of whether there's enough wood supply for 2 wood-fueled biomass plants in the Berlin area. The Berlin Daily Sun ran a piece citing a study from Clean Power that there would not be sufficient wood supply. Today Michael Bartosek at Laidlaw fired back at the Sun and Clean Power with this.
What I find most interesting about Bartosek's irate response is the last line, in which he states: " Everyone knows the Berlin transaction is about to close." Well, I'm part of "everyone" and I know no such thing.
Not to misquote a former president, but it depends what your definition of "about" is. Laidlaw has been saying that this project is "about" to close since I first moved to Berlin 2 years ago. So if "about" means sometime in the next 2-3 years, he might not be too far off. But I have to wonder whether his day-trading shareholders have a similar long-term definition.
So I propose we start to count the number of times we hear the "about to close" line from Laidlaw. When we get to 100, lets officially redefine "about to close" as "never going to happen."
Anyway closing means little. All it will mean is that the long road of permitting begins. I talked to a procurement manager for one of the north country biomass plants this week and he told me that one of the big energy companies who finances power plants like Laidlaws has written off northern NH as being close to "overbuilt" and were looking at financing plants in southern NH and MA. He had heard that Laidlaw had contacted them and they expressed no interest in the Berlin plant.
Posted by: Lea | August 16, 2008 at 10:49 AM