Chicken Litter Could Be ‘Green’: Firm Wants to Build Three N.C. Power Plants to Burn Biomass

One day, the truckloads of chicken manure that Donald Johnson spreads on his pasture could instead be turning on the lights in Iredell County.

A Pennsylvania-based company, Fibrowatt LLC, wants to build up to three small power plants in North Carolina that would burn chicken litter to generate electricity.

A number of rural counties are interested in hosting plants.

"That’s a bright idea," said Johnson, who has been raising chickens near Statesville for 31 years. "I’ve said it for years that they should use it for fuel."

This year, lawmakers in North Carolina are discussing a requirement that utilities supply a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources such as solar power. North Carolina, which is one of the nation’s largest poultry producers, is also one of the leading producers of poultry litter, the combination of wood shavings and manure known as biomass. It’s another type of renewable energy that may become part of the "green" mix.

Rupert Fraser, chief executive officer of Fibrowatt, said the state produces more than 3 million tons of poultry litter a year, enough to supply fuel for up to three 50-megawatt power plants — enough electricity to light an estimated 96,000 houses. The plants would be built in parts of the state where chicken and turkey farms are concentrated: Wilkes County in the mountains, Montgomery County in the central Piedmont, and Duplin and Sampson in the east.

"Poultry farming is a 12-month-a-year business," Fraser said in a recent interview. "Taking the litter away and spreading it on fields can only happen in spring and fall during fertilizer spreading season. We provide farmers with an alternative use for their litter, which is not seasonal."

In the 1990s, Fraser’s previous company built three poultry litter power plants in the United Kingdom. It sold them and moved its operation to the United States, which produces more poultry litter. Its first power plant in the United States — Fibrominn near Benson, Minn. — has been running about six weeks and is in the final stages of being commissioned.

Rob Wolfington, city manager of Benson, said after visits to England, city officials concluded the plant would be a good neighbor. He said the $200 million investment was substantial in a community of 3,400 people.

"We are surrounded by a sea of corn that supports the turkey industry," Wolfington said. "Every community has to rely on its natural resources. This is a good fit."

Fraser and other Fibrowatt representatives have been visiting states such as Arkansas and North Carolina, which could fuel plants.

A number of rural counties in North Carolina have expressed interest in hosting a Fibrowatt plant to boost their tax base and add jobs. Each plant represents an investment of about $150 million and would employ about 30 workers on site, with another 60 to transport litter from farm to plant.

Some counties, including Duplin, Sampson and Wilkes, have sent representatives to England to look at the Fibrowatt plants there.

Woody Brinson, executive director of the Duplin County Economic Development Commission, said they found people in England receptive to the plant and thought the project had merit.

"I found them to be very environmentally friendly," Brinson said. "There was no odor. If they hadn’t told us it was right behind the trees, we wouldn’t have known it was there."

The key to building the plants is getting long-term contracts with utilities such as Progress Energy and Duke to buy the power generated from chicken litter.

Producing electricity from chicken litter costs up to 50 percent more than traditional power from burning coal. By law, power companies in North Carolina are required to provide customers their power at the cheapest rates possible. Without legislation requiring Progress and Duke to buy electricity generated from burning poultry litter, the Fibrowatt plants wouldn’t have a market.

Fibrowatt officials are working on a bill at the General Assembly that would take their product and other renewable energy sources into account. The legislation, which could begin moving next week, would call for up to 900,000 megawatt hours of electricity generated from poultry litter by 2014.

Ivan Urlaub, executive and policy director for the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, which advocates for renewable energy and energy efficiency, said poultry litter is not an ideal source of renewable energy but is preferable to burning coal because of the environmental destruction caused by coal mining.

"Out of all the renewable energy options, it’s pretty obvious that combusting poultry litter isn’t the greenest option," Urlaub said.

But Urlaub said North Carolina with its large swine and poultry industries has an in-state supply of animal waste and using the waste as fuel could reduce the need for new nuclear or coal plants.

"We have a choice we have to make in our state," Urlaub said. "If we don’t meet it with poultry litter, we’re either going to meet with it with nuclear or coal."

In 2006, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, a group based in Glendale Springs, compared the air pollution from a power plant built by Fraser’s former company in Thetford, England, with Duke Power’s Buck Steam Station in Rowan County.

Blue Ridge found that the poultry litter plant, which burns 500,000 tons of litter a year, emits 2.5 times as much pollution per megawatt of electricity produced.

Fraser said the comparison was misleading. Fraser said coal-fired power plants emit new carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because the carbon has been stored in coal for millions of years. By contrast, he said, power plants that burn poultry litter are emitting carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere until it was taken up by grain crops that produce chicken meal.

"Our plant is producing recycled carbon dioxide," Fraser said. "If you exclude carbon dioxide from the calculations, we compare very favorably to the coal plant."

"When people say you are not as green as wind, I say, ‘We’re different," ‘ Fraser said. "We’re part of the spectrum of solutions that ought to be there. We want to be one of the options available to increase North Carolina’s renewable energy resources."

Staff writer Wade Rawlins can be reached at 829-4528 or wrawlins@newsobserver.com.

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