Orange County Partnership President Maureen Halahan took time out at the partnership”™s 2007 annual “most valuable partner” breakfast on June 5 to talk about another of the region”™s most valuable partners: Montgomery”™s James Taylor Jr.
In 2001, Taylor talked excitedly about his plan to turn garbage into electricity, hoping to generate enough power to cut costs for his recycling plant and hometown of Montgomery. Today, Taylor Recycling”™s construction containers are a common component on many residential and commercial building sights. Taylor has handed the reins of that end of the business to his son, James Taylor III. Taylor Jr., meantime, is concentrating on his latest project, Taylor Biomass Energy L.L.C.
Taylor offers a vivid description of how garbage could be turned into usable electricity as he readies to travel to Kampala, Uganda, where one of his trash gasification facilities is in the process of construction.
“There are now 20 in different stages of construction,” said Taylor. “But what I really hope is that the first one goes online in Montgomery. That”™s where it all started, and that”™s where I”™d like to see the first switch thrown.”
Saying the town of Montgomery has hired a due-diligence committee to monitor his hoped-for hometown”™s gasification plant, Taylor is anticipating a permit near the end of 2007. The $80 million project would bring Taylor”™s work force up between 75 and 125 new employees, he said. “We are with Local 17, so that means we”™ll have approximately 175 union employees working for both Taylor Recycling and Taylor Biomass.”
Halahan joked about sending Taylor to Naples, where a much-covered landfill closure essentially turned streets into trash bins. Getting serious, she called Taylor “an industry visionary, on the verge of putting Montgomery on the map.”
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Taylor said: “Using heated sand, we turn solid waste into gas: methane, carbon dioxide and others that produce energy.” Taylor believes his biomass process is “one of the cheapest ways of producing hydrogen in the world today.”
To Taylor, firing up the first gasification plant will be the culmination of years of work and what he hopes it will change the way the world does business. “I”™m looking forward to getting them built in every country to solve our worldwide crisis,” said Taylor.
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