Did you know?
What does it cost to start up a pelleting business?
Quite a lot. A gross estimate for the purchase and set up of all the equipment necessary to start up a pelleting business might cost around $150,000 for used equipment. New equipment set up to work with baled hay might be around $400,000. Production costs for pelleting could be as low as $25/ton of hay. It may be possible to lease pelleting equipment with the option to buy. Cooperatively-owned equipment among neighbors is an option, this is done in Europe.
For more Frequently Asked Questions, see our FAQ.
Want to know more?
Why use grasses as a biofuel?
It takes 70 days to grow a crop of grass pellet fuel.
It takes 70 million years to grow a crop of fossil fuel.
Grass pellets have great potential as a low-tech, small-scale, environmentally-friendly, renewable energy system that can be locally produced, locally processed and locally consumed. As the US focuses on energy security, grass bioenergy is one of the ways that rural communities can move towards energy security.
New York State has about 1.5 million acres of unused or underutilized agricultural land, most of which is already growing grass. Grass biofuel production does not need to divert any of the current agricultural productivity into the energy market; this biomass industry can be completely independent from, but complimentary to, the production of food or animal feed. It is also a very “farmer-friendly” way to get producers exposed to biofuel production.