Renewafuel announced Tuesday it's planning a ten million dollar project to produce environmentally friendly fuel cubes at Sawyer.
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SAWYER -- A manufacturing company that produces biomass fuel is making a major investment in Upper Michigan. Renewafuel announced Tuesday it's planning a $10 million project to produce environmentally friendly fuel cubes at Sawyer.
Cleveland-Cliffs purchased 70 percent of Renewafuel last December. They hope to use their low-emission fuel as an alternative to burning coal at some of their Michigan operations.
“We're going to be locating our first commercial facility of Renewafuel right here," said Dana Byrne, Cleveland-Cliffs Vice President of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Surrounded by community members in a hangar at the Telkite Technology Park in Sawyer, CCI and Renewafuel officials announced plans for a biomass plant that would annually produce 150,000 tons of fuel cubes. Those cubes are made from materials like corn stalks and wood by-products.
Cleveland-Cliffs officials plan on using 90,000 tons as fuel for their kilns at the Empire and Tilden mines.
"If we use a ton of our fuel to displace a ton of coal, it will result in a 100 percent reduction in greenhouse gases emitted because of the nature of the products we are using,” said Renewafuel President Jim Mennell. “It will be a 90 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide and over a 50 percent reduction in mercury emissions."
The plant will have 60,000 square feet in two hangars for production. Officials say 25 jobs will be created, and most of the raw materials will come from a 75-mile radius around the facility.
"It should be a large number of indirect jobs for loggers, independent truckers and farmers in the area," Mennell said.
It's not only CCI who'll be using the fuel cubes. The Marquette Board of Light and Power has also been testing the fuel cubes as an alternative to coal at their Shiras plant. They hope to use 60,000 tons for unit two at Shiras.
"The test burns that we've done to this point indicate we would have to do very little to our units in order to accommodate the burn of the biomass," said Kirby Juntila with the Board of Light and Power.
As soon as Renewafuel obtains permits, they hope to begin construction immediately and be fully operational by the first quarter of next year.
