LIVERMORE FALLS – A corporate tax bill passed by Congress Monday would grant tax credits to Maine’s biomass generators.

President Bush is expected to sign the proposal, under which tax credits for electricity produced from renewable sources would be expanded to include existing wood-fired power plants, said Dave Wilby, executive director of Independent Energy Producers of Maine.

Congress also extended tax credits for wind energy producers earlier this fall.

The tax-credit provisions would give biomass plants that don’t grow their own wood a .9 cent tax credit per kilowatt-hour, and wind production plants a credit of 1.8 cents a kilowatt-hour, Wilby said.

The state has nine stand-alone, grid-scale biomass facilities, three of which are in the process of resuming operations after extended closures, Wilby said.

One of the nine biomass plants is in Livermore Falls, which has the capacity to produce about 260,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually, and another is in Stratton, which has the capability to produce more than 300,000 megawatt-hours of electricity a year.

Both plants are owned by Boralex Inc., which is headquartered in Canada.

“Many of Maine’s biomass plants have struggled to stay afloat over the past few years,” Wilby said. “The passage of this biomass production tax credit is probably the most important thing the federal government could do for these plants. This provision is also a real shot in the arm for rural Maine communities like Sherman, Stratton, Greenville, Ashland and others where biomass play a huge role in the local economy.”

Biomass facilities play a key role in the state’s forest products industry, as they provide a valuable market for wood waste from sawmills and forest activities, he said.

The industry supports hundreds of jobs, directly and indirectly, throughout Maine, he added.

Stu Miller, general manager of Stratton Lumber in Stratton, said that the company and Stratton Boralex Energy have had an agreement for years.

The lumber company provides wood waste such as bark, wood chips and broken pieces of wood to the biomass producer for use in its boiler. In return, the lumber company basically gets 100 percent of its electricity supply from Boralex, Miller said.

“Their existence is critical to ours,” Miller said.

A federal production tax credit for “closed loop” biomass plants, which grow their own wood, has been on the books since 1992, but no facility in the country has been able to take advantage of it, Wilby said. The provision approved Monday by Congress extends the credits to open-loop plants that get their fuel from other places.

A federal production tax credit for wind has also been in place since 1992, Wilby said, but it expired in December. Congress renewed it this fall, he said.

Two wind-power developments are proposed in Maine: a 52-megawatt wind farm on Redington and Black Nubble mountains in Redington Township in Franklin County, and a 50-megawatt facility for Mars Hill in Aroostook County.

Harley Lee of Endless Energy Corp., which is planning to build a wind farm in Redington Township, said the tax credits are a big help for wind energy producers.