The nonprofit Florida Municipal Power Agency has signed a nonbinding letter of intent to explore participating in the plasma arc gasification solid-waste plant being built in St. Lucie County on Florida’s east coast by Atlanta-based Geoplasma LLC.
St. Lucie County will be the conduit for issuing $250 million of tax-exempt bonds and $75 million of taxable bonds to provide a portion of the financing to build the $425 million Geoplasma plant.
Geoplasma will build and own the facility that will process 3,000 tons of municipal solid waste per day using plasma-arc gasification to create temperatures hotter than the sun to vaporize garbage and trash. A gas by-product will be used to create electricity. Both the gas and the electricity can be sold to other vendors, such as the FMPA.
“We would potentially be a customer for buying electricity from a generating unit owned by Geoplasma or buying the gas and using it to fuel a power plant owned by FMPA,” said the agency’s spokesman, Mark McCain.
McCain said FMPA might use debt financing to build a power plant fueled by the gas. FMPA could also purchase electricity from Geoplasma and in that case debt financing most likely would not be necessary.
