A watershed USIPA Conference

Over 300 attendees convened in fashionable Miami Beach, which had remained unscathed from Hurricane Ian’s Florida landfall just days before.

However, Hurricane Ian also provided a renewed sense of urgency and a reminder of the purpose of USIPA, its members, the clients of its members, and everyone else in the bioenergy and renewable energy space, a point made by USIPA Board Chairman Thomas Meth, President, and co-founder of Enviva Inc, the world’s largest wood pellet producer, in the traditional opening “state of the industry” address.

Amongst other things, Thomas Meth, who was hot on the heels of Enviva’s official opening of its Lucedale pellet facility in Mississippi (MS), highlighted the wider role of “sustainably sourced biomass”, alluding (assumably) to the agreement between Enviva and Alder Fuels.

This wider role was evidenced by the conference program itself and corroborated by the diverse professional backgrounds amongst the over 300 attendees.

Apart from the traditional global market overview, buyers’ panel, and producers’ panel – the former of which saw the first (major) public appearance of Gilles Gauthier as a Hawkins Wright rep (previously Bioenergy Europe/ENplus) – the program included keynotes from Dr Carlos Rodriguez-Franco, Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, John P. Cabaniss, Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), and Jeanne F. Bailey, Foreign Agricultural Services (FAS), all of whom spoke of various biomass-related programs, R&D, funding support, and market access relevant to US pellet producers – perhaps the three most valuable public service contacts at the conference.

Another new addition, which ultimately may warrant a minor name amendment of the conference, was a US market overview presented by Tim Portz, Pellet Fuels Institute (PFI).

PFI represents North American pellet producers that primarily supply the domestic heating degree day (aka season and weather) dependent residential- and commercial space heating, and barbecue or patio cooking markets.

While some PFI members have exported container volumes to European residential markets, the average pellet plant is “European scale” rather than “Enviva scale”, and few if any are ENplus certified.

That said, Tim Portz remarked that PFI and PFI members are being inundated with inquiries, and current prices in Europe make a compelling case.

If logistics and certification issues can be sorted out PFI members could amass an estimated 200 000 (short) tons by ramping up existing capacity, “let’s talk and work it out” he offered.

A well-known expert on pellet demand and trade flows, Dr William Strauss, FutureMetrics, discussed bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), experience thus far with Drax, and how the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could support BECCS in the US.

An elegant lead into the following “future of biomass fuels” panel session that explored biomass availability and potential for applications in transportation and chemicals with amongst others Darren Fuller, Alder Fuels.

In another panel, Dr Strauss together with a dedicated Asia-Pacific panel gave valuable insight into the Asia-Pacific pellet market and where demand might be headed in the near future, for instance, Japan.

The shipping and logistics panel thematically tied the three aforementioned sessions together.

Here experts discussed the decarbonization of shipping – scrubbers, hard sails, methanol, ammonia, bioLNG, etc – all of which offer opportunities and challenges for the biomass value chain.

USIPA’s Exporting Pellets Conference has evolved as the industry itself has grown and matured.

Seen over the twelve years that USIPA has existed, it is a truly remarkable development, and as many members and attendees testified during the event, down to the unrelenting grind and glass half full “we’ll find a way” attitude of one man and subsequently his team – USIPA’s former Executive Director Seth Ginther – the recipient of a newly incorporated Life Time Achievement Award as a token of recognition, appreciation, and honour of his achievements for the industry.

Following Seth’s award tribute, Amandine Muskus was introduced as the new Executive Director who will take USIPA, and its members, into a new era of (industrial) pellets 2.0.