As we have gone through our development process in various areas, we have heard several people say that a Fibrowatt project “is just 30-35 jobs.”

In the rural poultry-rearing areas where Fibrowatt plants are developed, we have seen a uniform concern about jobs. Many of these areas have seen their non-agriculture, anchor industries like textiles and other manufacturing plants shut-down – and there haven’t been a lot of other employment opportunities to replace them. While we understand people’s emphasis on direct job creation, looking at a Fibrowatt project as just direct jobs fails to understand the real extent of the job benefits for the area.

A Fibrowatt project is about much more than just jobs at the plant; it’s also about:

  • Construction jobs,
  • Direct plant support and service jobs,
  • Induced jobs (jobs created as a spin-off from spending by these new jobs), and
  • In the case of the poultry industry, it’s about job protection and expansion.

In a study (pdf) completed for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, it was indicated that – for every job at a biomass power plant – two additional jobs would be created to directly support the plant.

This study went on further to suggest that the job impact of a biomass power plant would be equal to roughly 4.9 jobs for every megawatt of capacity at the plant. For a 40 MW plant, this would suggest a job impact of nearly 200 jobs.

While it might be hard to determine the total job impact for a Fibrowatt plant because the added benefits of job protection and expansion within the poultry industry, it does go to show the extent of job impacts beyond “just 30-35 jobs.”