A Maine company plans to open a bulk wood pellet distribution center in St. Johnsbury as a way to expand the market for fossil fuel alternatives in Vermont.
Bethel-based Maine Energy Systems — which sells loose wood pellets in bulk and pellet boilers and furnaces — received a $150,000 grant from the state Department of Public Service for the $510,000 project. The funds will come through a Vermont subsidiary.
The facility will feature a silo and treat pellets before they are loaded onto pneumatic trucks, said company president B.J. Otten. It’s set to go up in the Northeastern Vermont Development Association industrial park and be finished by the end of September 2021.
“Being in St. Johnsbury, it’s sort of a great geographic area to hit a number of budding markets in Vermont,” Otten said. “This is just the next step in the development of that market in the state.”
The planned building will act as a distribution hub for wood pellets used in central heating. Otten said his company had already been doing business in Vermont, but its trucks were delivering pellets from its Maine headquarters.
That was inefficient, he said, and wood can lose its value as an alternative energy source if it has to be carted over long distances.
And not having a local distribution hub would likely be detrimental to building people’s confidence in alternative heating fuels, he said.
“The real impact is what we see as the confidence for people to buy the equipment,” he said, explaining a consumer’s thought process as: “‘OK, that’s where my fuel is going to come from; now I feel comfortable investing in this heating system.”
Consumers would be more interested in products like his, he wagers, if the products are coming from close by.
“The whole concept … is using an indigienous local fuel source to supply (customers) in a proximity close to where it’s being used,” he said.
The project’s funding from the state is part of a larger initiative to create incentives for alternative energy in Vermont: the Clean Energy Development Fund’s Bulk Wood Pellet and Dried-Chip Supply Infrastructure Grant.
According to DPS, which operates the development fund, the grants are meant to support the bulk pellet and dried wood chip supply sector in Vermont and to benefit the state’s wood-heating market.
Six outfits applied for the grants in November 2019, fund director Andrew Perchlik said, and three were awarded: Bourne’s Energy received about $51,500; Lyme Green Heat received $130,000; and Vermont Energy Systems, a subsidiary of Maine Energy Systems, received $150,000.
“An investment in this technology by an individual — that investment’s going to be seen and paid back to the community decades after,” said Otten. “So for the state … seeding this so early, they’re going to be reaping the benefits years down the road.”
