A nearly $150 million grant announced Tuesday sparked a wave of excitement about the world’s largest long-term energy storage facility coming to Lincoln.
The $147 million federal grant will go toward building a multi-day energy storage facility on a portion of the old Lincoln pulp mill site, where roughly 400 acres have sat vacant since the mill fully closed in 2015. The facility will house giant batteries that absorb energy when there’s a surplus on the grid, storing it until it’s needed. The 8,500-megawatt-hour facility can then discharge energy continuously for 100 hours.
The project is welcome news in a town that has struggled with its identity since its pulp mill closed in 2015 and took away hundreds of jobs. But Lincoln officials are cautious about what exactly this plan could mean moving forward, pointing out that it takes years for projects of this scale to come to fruition.
Whenever a business says it’s coming to town, it isn’t officially in town until it’s open, Lincoln Town Manager Richard Bronson said. There’s no guarantee a business is opening until steam is coming out of a smoke stack, or whatever the metaphorical equivalent may be, he said.
The facility would be built and operated by Form Energy, a technology and manufacturing company, and funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Lincoln officials don’t want the public to get their hopes up for a project that doesn’t come together, the town’s Economic Development Administrator Ruth Birtz said. The town had conversations with Form Energy earlier in the year but the company didn’t have funding at that time.
Town officials learned about the grant on Monday. There isn’t a lease between Lincoln and Form Energy yet, but the town is looking forward to making that happen.
“We were very happy but somewhat surprised to see they had indicated that they were going to be locating on the Lincoln mill site,” Birtz said.
Typically, the town avoids talking publicly about those types of “preliminary conversations” because the projects can take years to move forward between development, locating the project, getting a lease signed and permits approved, Birtz added.
It’s not the fault of Form Energy, but there are more unknowns than known factors in the project at this point, Bronson said.
Just fewer than 100 construction jobs will be created and there will be a “handful” of full-time operation and maintenance jobs, Form Energy told the Bangor Daily News.
Contract negotiations with government offices and regulatory approval means exact timing is unclear but construction is planned to begin in 2027, Form Energy said.
The battery plant previously talked about needing 40 to 50 acres and there’s plenty of space for that, Lincoln’s Economic Development Advisor Steve Levesque said. He said getting a lease signed between the town and Form Energy is the next step, which will hopefully happen quickly.
Lincoln owns the former mill site, which is now the Lincoln Technology Park. The town is working to bring in businesses that work with wood products and other technology, Levesque said.
Another company, Biofine Developments Northeast, plans to break ground on part of the property in early 2025, two years after it signed a lease with Lincoln. It’ll create several hundred jobs in its plant that will turn waste wood products into ethyl levulinate, a carbon-neutral substitute for home heating oil.
The paper and tissue mill declared bankruptcy, with between $10 and $50 million in debt, about two years after a smelt water explosion in a chemical recovery boiler in November 2013 forced the mill to shut down. The boiler was too expensive to replace and around 200 employees were laid off.
Lincoln bought the old mill property piecemeal in the years since, Birtz said. It first bought roughly 76 acres in 2018 with the plan to commercially develop the area.
“It’s certainly been a labor of love but it’s certainly something the town could not ignore because it’s right in the middle of town and has the infrastructure to support this,” Birtz said.
Form Energy and Biofine will be great cornerstone developments on the property, Levesque said. The town is in conversations with other companies and also hopes to open a business incubator.
Despite officials’ reservations, it was very nice to be the town selected out of the entire state of Maine, Birtz said.
“It was like ‘Oh OK, this is good. We look forward to working with you,’” she said. “Hopefully this can be a great part of the Lincoln Technology Park.”
