Orrington waste plant sold to company that tried to buy Hampden competitor - Bangor Daily News
Failed buyer of Hampden waste plant wins bid for PERC in Orrington
A company that failed to buy a troubled trash facility in Hampden two years ago has now won the right to restart the foreclosed waste-to-energy incinerator in Orrington.
Delta Thermo Energy made the winning bid of $1.5 million during an auction on Thursday for the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. plant in Orrington, according to Plant Manager Henry Lang. The facility first went to auction Oct. 25, but did not get a single bid that day.
“There were more bidders in this auction, compared to the one on Oct. 25 and there were some observers hoping to start a deal with the new owners for power purchases, once the facility is back in operation,” Lang said in an email.
Delta has five days from the auction to provide 10 percent of the sale amount minus the $50,000 already paid to qualify as a bidder, Lang said. The remainder of the balance is due within 27 days.
Delta Thermo Energy had previously tried to buy the Hampden waste facility that shuttered in 2020 less than a year after it started running.
The CEO of Delta Thermo Energy, a Pennsylvania company, had embellished his business’ track record while trying to acquire the Hampden plant, and his company ultimately lost its exclusive right to purchase it after failing to show evidence of financing.
This time around, it’s not clear what the company is planning to do if it completes the purchase of PERC. A phone call and email to Delta Thermo Energy were not immediately returned on Thursday. And Lang did not respond to requests for additional information.
The Orrington plant has had trouble turning a profit since 2019, after losing a lucrative power-purchase agreement for the electricity it sold to the grid and after many Maine communities got behind the construction of the new waste facility in Hampden.
PERC now owes around $765,000 in real estate and personal property taxes. It stopped operating on May 2, but still accepted trash from the town of Orrington until it filled up in early September. That waste is now going to the Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town.
In recent years, the 40-acre facility located off of Route 15 has been taking in trash from 44 communities and commercial waste haulers.
Marie Weidmayer contributed reporting.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.