Article from: Forbes | September 21, 2009 | Copyright - 2008 Forbes
Mark Mathis made a trip to Home Depot in February 2007 to buy more fuel for his wood pellet stove. The store, in Summit County, Colo., was sold out, and it wasn’t the only one. There was a shortage of pellets nationwide. Mathis left, wondering how there could possibly be a pellet fuel shortage. All across Colorado 2 million acres of trees have been assaulted by the mountain pine beetle. “I looked up at the dead and dying trees. In every catastrophe there’s an opportunity,” says Mathis. He decided to build his own pellet mill.
Mathis, who has lived near Kremmling, Colo. for 25 of his 47 years, pitched his plan to wealthy landowners who had plenty of trees to cut. He raised $10 million to found Confluence Energy and built the biggest pellet mill west of the Mississippi (and Colorado’s first). Confluence bought its first 2,000 tons of pine from the city of Vail for $28 a ton. The trees are cut into chips, dried in a sawdust-powered …
