Hamilton County Renewable Energy Center

The Hamilton County Renewable Energy Center will consist of a wood fuel handling system, a bubbling fluidized bed boiler, a condensing steam turbine generator with an evaporative cooling tower and auxiliary support equipment. American Renewables has secured site control access on an approximately 260 acre parcel near Rt. 41 between the towns of Jasper and White Springs. The project will employ the latest in boiler and emissions control technology to achieve the best available emissions.

The Hamilton County Renewable Energy Center will be consistent with renewable energy and climate change policies espoused by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, the Florida Legislature and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. In July 2007, Governor Charlie Crist signed three Executive Orders committing Florida to reduce greenhouse gases and increase energy efficiency. The Executive Orders require the state government to develop a governmental carbon scorecard and work to reduce governmental emissions, direct the adoption of maximum emission levels of greenhouse gases for electric utilities and request that the Public Service Commission adopt a 20 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard by 2020.

In April 2008, the Florida Legislature passed a comprehensive energy bill that ordered the Public Service Commission to develop a Renewable Portfolio Standard. PPA negotiations are currently in progress with local utilities. American Renewables anticipates that construction on the project will begin in 2011 and the project will be commercially operable in 2014.

The project will be fueled by biomass, including forest residue from the surrounding, heavily wooded areas of northern Florida and southern Georgia, wood processing residues and clean municipal wood waste. The project will require approximately one million tons of fuel annually, sourced within a 75-mile radius of the project site. American Renewables is currently conducting a system impact study with the transmission system owner. A comprehensive fuel study by an independent forestry consultant has confirmed that fuel resources within this radius are more than adequate to fuel the project.