Staff Report
Published March 8, 2010
A Port of Georgetown-based energy company has exported its first shipment of wood briquettes, a renewable energy source, to Europe.
Carolina-Pacific hosted its first ship call and sent 5,000 tons of its product to Scandinavia.
Wood pellets and briquettes are quickly becoming a high-demand commodity overseas, driven by a European Union policy that requires its member countries to use renewable sources to generate 20% of the electric power supply by 2020.
Carolina-Pacific, which focuses on renewable energy, signed a 20-year contract last summer with the State Ports Authority to ship through Georgetown and to establish a manufacturing operation at the site.
As part of the deal, Carolina-Pacific is occupying more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse space at the port to support its manufacturing and exporting business.
Congrat's on your first shipment. This will be very good for the port and the area workforce. Keep up the good work in renewable energy, it's important.
Given the critical need to replace fossil fueled electric power production with renewable energy sources, wouldn't it be environmentally advantageous to find markets in this country? I realize that the economics of biomass power production calls for its fuel supply within a 75-mile radius of the power plant which may exclude Carolina-Pacific from market opportunities.
Depending upon the source of biomass material that makes up the wood briquettes (clean waste wood, C&D (construction and demolition wood), forest management waste, etc., I also question the potential negative domino effect on the price of wood chips for stateside biomass plants.
John Bos
John, I talked to the people at Carolina-Pacific a while back, and they're very interested in finding domestic markets for their products, but they don't have any buyers. I was told that European countries require a certain amount of energy produced from green fuel sources, which means they're hungry for this type of product. We'll keep watching this, however. Thanks,
