Great Northern Prairie Energy, a Minnesota based company, recently proposed to build a 23-24 megawatt, wood fired biomass facility in the Rockford / Buffalo area. This facility could produce enough energy for about 18,000 local households.

How this facility would work is they would burn wood waste from things like tree trimming, storm damage clean up, diseases trees that were cut down as well as small quantities of plant byproducts such as corn stalks, buckthorn or milfoil.

To give you an idea each megawatt of energy capacity generates about 40,000 pounds of regulated emissions per year, or less than the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by two average Minnesota households.

If completed the facility will produce at least 100 jobs during construction and 20 permanent jobs once completed.