Ryegate biomass plant requests one‑year delay to efficiency deadlines; new owners say technical and market disruptions drove need

Owners of the Ryegate biomass electric generation facility asked the Senate Finance Committee on May 20 for a one‑year extension of statutory deadlines that require the plant to make efficiency upgrades to qualify for a utility power‑purchase obligation.

Lenny Carter, who identified himself as president of Ryegate Associates and managing partner of Mizzen Capital (the company that became the plant’s owner three weeks earlier), told the committee that supply‑chain problems and tariffs on specialized heat‑recovery and drying equipment from Europe made the original upgrade plan uneconomic. Carter said earlier arrangements to dry wood chips for resale were canceled and that the new ownership needs time to pivot to a different, internally integrated plan to dry and burn its own chips.

“We need about a year to make sure that fundamental engineering work can pivot to a new process that is going to still work,” Carter said. He described the plant as a 35‑year‑old industrial facility that runs 24/7 with limited annual downtime and said the team has completed significant engineering work and intends to proceed with measures to lower wood‑chip moisture and improve efficiency.

Dan St. On, a local wood‑chip supplier who said he has coordinated deliveries and payments for the plant for about a year, told the committee that timely payment to chip suppliers was essential to maintain the supply chain. “If you don’t get another party involved in paying these guys, you ain’t get wood,” he said, noting suppliers need reliable weekly payments to meet payroll.

The Ryegate‑related provision would push back a series of statutory reporting and upgrade deadlines tied to the plant’s continued eligibility for a long‑term power‑purchase arrangement that utilities were directed to buy under state law. The plant’s final power‑purchase end date remains unchanged in the proposal (the transcript records the contract end as 2032), but milestone dates for submitting documentation and achieving staged efficiency improvements would move later by one year under the requested change.

Testimony and committee discussion noted the plant’s importance to local timber and logging economies and the risk that closure could hurt multiple small‑scale suppliers; at least one senator said shutting the plant down could put 30 to 40 small logging operations at risk. Committee members asked whether the Department of Public Service (DPS) or the Public Utility Commission could provide an independent assessment of the plant’s viability and likely ability to meet the efficiency objectives. Committee staff said DPS and the PUC had provided written testimony to the Natural Resources Committee previously, and that DPS’s written analysis had been circulated.

Ryegate’s new owners described a technical approach to lowering wood moisture — reducing average chip moisture from about 45% toward the mid‑20s to improve combustion efficiency — and said they are exploring on‑site uses of plant‑adjacent property for development (solar, greenhouse, or other energy‑oriented purposes) though those ideas are preliminary.

What matters: the statute ties certain efficiency upgrades to the plant’s favorable power‑purchase pricing; extending deadlines preserves the plant’s rate eligibility in the short term while owners attempt to make the project viable. The committee asked for further comfort from DPS or the PUC on technical and rate impacts before a final legislative decision.

Next steps: committee members said they would seek the Department of Public Service’s and the Public Utility Commission’s technical perspectives and written analysis. The bill containing the Ryegate extension (part of H.319, the miscellaneous environmental subjects bill) was moved favorably out of committee as amended; the transcript records committee discussion and a favorable committee report for H.319.