Some entrepreneurs give up after the first year. Some last several years.
But Jim Taylor never gave up, even after 13 years of fighting to build a trash-to-electricity plant in his Orange County community. Though he doesn”™t remember the names of the dozens of bankers who turned his idea down, he does know the Department of Energy believed in the project enough to guarantee a $100 million loan for the nation”™s first gasification plant, which broke ground Dec. 6 in Montgomery.
Taylor was one of several candidates who crossed the financial finish line when applying for the funding.
“The U.S. Department of Energy has put millions into this project because the whole country is looking at Taylor Biomass,” said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer before he welcomed Taylor to the podium a few steps away from the groundbreaking site. “They (California) have the microprocessor ”“ we (New York) have the biomass technology, the way of the future. It”™s a great Christmas present.”
And now for the hard part: Taylor”™s gasification plant must have five percent of substantial construction completed by Dec. 31, according to his agreement with the Energy Department. “So if you see the lights on at night, you”™ll know we”™re working to hit that target,” Taylor beamed.
U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, who helped secure funding for Taylor and worked with Schumer and others to get the Energy Department to consider Taylor”™s project, cited it as a “dramatic improvisation of the way we will handle waste. The federal loan guarantee, including other federal grants and loans nearing $134 million, will give us the first commercial facility in the country to separate solid waste and turn it into clean, green, renewable energy.”
Hinchey credited the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for providing the funding and said the new project would become a “learning center for other biomass plants that will begin to spring up around the country.”
When Taylor Recycling was in its infancy, he was showing people the spot where he wanted to build a plant that would take municipal waste and reduce it to ash, creating electricity in the process. It was no starry-eyed ideal he had ”“ Taylor worked with engineers and designers on his plans, fought some tough court challenges along the way, traveled to other countries to introduce the concept ”“ and according to angel investor James Ottaway, founder of Ottaway Newspapers, literally “bet the farm and mortgaged his house in a bad economy because he had the courage to stick with it … and by creating a new source of electricity for the U.S., he is going to help stop funding countries who are talking ”˜jihad”™ against us and help make this country independent.”
Taylor Biomass”™ gasification plant already has a customer ”“ the New York State Power Authority, which will buy the energy created from the process and sell it to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the form of renewable energy credits.
Chris Zeppie, director of the office of energy programs for the Port Authority has been working with the Power Authority and entering into an agreement to buy the biomass energy sold to the grid. The 20-year contract may yield as much as $2 million a year once the plant is operational.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation will have a monitor on site, paid for by Taylor as part of his federal agreement, to supervise the building of the solid waste-to-electricity facility.
“We”™re excited about the new technology,” said Willie Janeway, DEC Region 3 director. “Currently, only 20 percent of solid waste is recycled. This is going to dramatically push that number up to the point where landfills will become a last resort,” Janeway said. ?“There”™s no doubt a lot of people will be watching this project with great interest.”
The 200,000-square-foot structure will be built on 95 acres on Taylor Recycling”™s Neelytown Road property in Montgomery. Taylor said he expects it will create at least 350 construction jobs and 80 permanent jobs once it is completed by the fourth quarter of 2012.
Taylor, who long ago had been told he could no longer dump the stumps from his tree cutting business at the landfill, ground them into woodchips and sold them for mulch. That was the start of his foray into the recycling business, which has now grown into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Although courted by other states to bring his plans to them, the innovative Taylor stuck to his original goal: he wanted to build the plant in his own community, a commitment he never wavered from.
