Power Plant Management

We manage and modernize existing power plant assets for ourselves and others to achieve superior rates of return. Improving performance means higher profits and better environmental stewardship.

• Sterling and its partners have a half-century's experience in the power plant business.
• We have fully integrated teams of professionals to assess and devise new standard operating plans for maximizing returns.



Power Plant Conversions and Surgical Decommissioning

We convert fossil fuel plants to renewable resources. Replacing or augmenting existing fossil fuel technologies with cleaner,  modern technologies using natural fuels. Removing obsolete equipment to streamline performance.

• We specialize in converting coal and natural gas to biomass. 
• Collecting and processing MSW  into energy via gasification and anaerobic digestion.
• Adding biochar production to existing facilities as a means of carbon capture.
• Contracting to remove and refurbish parts and equipment

Facilities Development & Construction

We develop. design, construct and operate different types of energy plants using state-of-the-art technologies. We build plants for ourselves and with partner-developers in over 20 countries.

• Distributing the production of energy using smaller, efficiently-sized plants situated closer to the feedstock and closer to the customer makes sense. It reduces the costs of transport, creates local jobs, and places production nearer to where it is most needed. 
• We build Energy plants that consume renewable resources from a variety of sources and produce electricity, gas, and liquid fuels with a zero or less-than-zero carbon footprint.

Renewable Diesel Fuel (RD)

We manufacture renewable diesel from waste biomass and from biomass grown expressly for this purpose.

• Diesel fuel is an integral part of the global supply chain. Trucks, ships, cars, trains, and generators, all use diesel. Unfortunately, diesel contributes greatly to the volume of greenhouse gases that are warming our planet.
• The solution is to manufacture "drop-in" diesel from biomass that took CO2 from the air. while it was growing. Our technologies sequester much of that carbon and the fuel we produce is cleaner, has less odor and has zero sulfur. Replacing fossil fuel with renewable fuel is logical,  practical and affordable.    

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)

We manufacture jet fuel from waste biomass and from biomass grown expressly for this purpose.

• Jet aircraft cannot run on batteries.  Jet fuel will be with us for a long time. The solution to the huge carbon footprints of the world's airlines is to create their fuel from renewable resources.
• We produce sustainable fuel from readily available, locally grown biomass that takes carbon from the air. Our production technologies sequester huge portions of that carbon as solids so it never goes into the atmosphere, but replenishes carbon back into the soil. With SAF, the more we fly the more we actually reduce the CO2 and the more we can reduce global warming.

Fuel Harvesting: C&D Waste

We collect, transport, sort, recycle and process construction & demolition (C&D) waste in our own facilities.

• Lumber, sheet products, paper, plastic, metal, and aggregate are collected at the building site or at transfer stations and transported affordably by rail to our main facility in North Carolina.  We isolate recyclables to sell and to convert the balance to high-energy fuel for use in boilers and gasifiers.
• Recycling waste into energy to replace fossil fuel makes sense, saves money, and saves the planet. Keeping vast amounts of C&D waste from entering landfills and repurposing what we can reduces the pollution that would have been created in producing new "virgin" goods.

Fuel Harvesting: Fuel Crops

Traditional diesel, gasoline and jet fuel can be replaced economically with equivalently high quality fuels made responsibly from biomass.  Moving forward, we can leave fossil fuels in the ground where they have been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years. 

• Timber, grasses, and bamboo can all be used as materials for the production of replacement liquid fuels. We work with local growers to provide us with supplies of renewable biomass to convert to renewable diesel and jet fuel.
• The cycle of growing and conversion has a negative carbon footprint. Effectively, the more renewable fuels we can make and the more the world uses, the more carbon will be removed from the atmosphere.

BioChar & Activated Carbon

Co-products of our energy production from biomass is biochar, which in turn can be converted to activated carbon.

• The process of gasification and pyrolysis convert solids to gas. Unilke incineration which burns carbon (and makes CO2 in the process) our processes leave behind solid carbon. This "biochar" is an excellent soil amendment.
• Biochar can also be enhanced to form activated carbon. Activated carbon appears "popcorned" under a microscope. The cracks and fissures in the material trap contaminants at a molecular level and so it is a superior and valuable filter material..                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

New Equipment Sales

Individual pieces of equipment or full production lines engineered to meet project parameters.

• Gasifiers
• Dryers
• Anaerobic digesters
• Conveyor systems and material handling
• Pelletizers
• Briquetters
• Gas cleaning equipment
• Gas chillers 
• Fischer-Tropsh process equipment

Used Equipment Sales

Used and refurbished equipment.

Selection varies.

• Material handling equipment
• Power generation equipment
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