Energy strategy key to economic vitality

Maine and New Brunwick's forests have significant potential as a biomass resource in the future development of renewable energy. Biomass technology has been developed in other countries but is in the nascent stage in the United States. The relationship between forestry management practices and biomass technological advances and applications was discussed at a recent Down East Resource Conservation & Development Council (DERC&D) informational seminar, held Thursday, November 6, in Machias. The focus was on the use of biomass as an alternative to fossil fuels in institutional and commercial settings. The primary speaker was Tim Maker, senior project manager for Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC), a national nonprofit organization that specializes in the research, development and set-up of systems that use woody biomass and other types of biomass fuels that can be made into pellets.

Maker began the presentation by connecting fossil fuel production and supply issues with the challenges that rural communities face with energy demands. He explained that 1970 was the highest point of U.S. oil production and that the U.S. Department of Energy predicts that world oil production will peak at 2025. "Realistically," he said, "we'll see more unstable fluctuations in prices driven by demand and supply issues." Because rural communities are "at the end of the pipeline," Maker added, "this creates a competitive disadvantage." For communities that have ample forests, wood energy demands will only increase as oil production issues increase. While a long-term goal of forestry product development could be for individual residential fuel needs, Maker's presentation focused on examples of uses by school campuses, hospitals and municipal facilities.

Biomass is considered a local, renewable energy source. According to Maker, the simplest forms of biomass are wood chips, preferably and usually burned green, that generally come from sawmill and timber harvesting residues. Wood pellets are a less simple biomass form because of the manufacturing process needed to create the product.

Each type of biomass product has its respective technology and, as Maker discussed, is best used according to certain types of applications. The larger the system, the more cost effective and the easier to regulate the environmental impact, he said. "Emission from wood is inherently dirty, but the bigger you get, the easier it is to use technology to keep emissions low. The hardest [emissions] technology to work with is a wood stove." Those biomass systems used to heat spaces larger than 40,000 square feet are best served by wood chips. Commercial or institutional spaces less than the 40,000 measure are more aptly served by pellets.

Infrastructure options

The largest potential form of biomass infrastructure, community district heating, has been common in Europe for over 40 years. As Maker explained, district energy systems use a central plant, or combination of plants, to provide heat to a number of buildings through underground pipelines. The first North American system was built over 100 years ago in New York State. Today such systems are used for heating, cooling and cogeneration of electricity. As an example, Maker explained that Copenhagen, Denmark, has a district system that heats 90% of the city. While Copenhagen uses many different types of fuels, wood is a part of the mixture. He shared other examples, such as a linked community district created over a number of years in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, which serves 20,000. The barrier to such systems in the United States, Maker noted, is that "we don't have a model for financing these systems yet."

Currently, Maker said, Vermont has 35 schools running on wood chips. Bennington College and Middlebury College, both located in that state, are adding biomass plants to their campus infrastructure. According to Middlebury's website, the college expects the biomass plant to cut their use of two million gallons of heating oil in half. Collaborating with State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Middlebury is two years into a four-year study of willow as a fast growing agricultural product that could be grown on former farmland as a sustainable three-year rotational crop. If the research proves successful, estimates show that a 400-acre planting would supply Middlebury's biomass plant with an annual supply of wood chips equal to 500,000 gallons of oil, or half their biomass requirement.

Gary Edwards of DERC&D noted that Cornell University is researching switchgrass harvesting as a sustainable agricultural product that could be used for chip and pellet biomass technologies. Maker hopes that a new forest products industry will be organized around energy, but in order for this to occur he also believes in the importance of controls. "Forestry management and regulation will be increasingly important for the long-term growth and viability of this emerging industry."

Forest sustainability

Financing structures and forestry management strategies are two of many steps that need to be researched and developed in order for biomass systems to operate successfully and sustainably. Lewis Pinkham, manager for the town of Milbridge, noted during the seminar, "If we don't have regulation, our forests won't grow back as they need to." Maker commented, "Most people would agree that our forests could use better management." Maker's nonprofit company, BERC, is partially funding a study undertaken in partnership with Maine Forest Service. While the report is under way and not yet released, it examines the "issues around the use of wood fuels (woodchips and wood pellets) in schools and other public buildings in Maine."

The Maine Forest Service has available an existing forest resources assessment report, Maine Forest Service Assessment of Sustainable Biomass Availability. The report, issued in July 2008, found that "an analysis of highly reliable existing information on Maine's forest resources indicates that, with improvements in forest utilization and silviculture, Maine's forests are capable of producing substantially more wood than they do currently, while at the same time retaining the number of den trees, snags, large dead logs, and limbs and tops needed to maintain or improve site fertility, wildlife populations, and biodiversity." In order to meet future and expanded wood product demands, the report recommends that four steps be taken: improve harvest/utilization of wood from currently harvested stands; harvest in stands not previously considered commercially viable; increase productivity (and allowable cut) through more intensive management; increase imports from outside Maine's borders.

In November of this year, New Brunswick issued its first biomass policy, Crown Land Forest Biomass Harvesting Policy, as a measure to support and strengthen the economy through the sustainable harvest of Crown biomass resources. The policy was crafted in response to industry requests for access to Crown forest biomass.

David Coon, policy director for Conservation Council of New Brunswick, feels that an important step was missing in the development of this policy. "The cart came before the horse. We need a bio-energy strategy in place first. Right now the policy is driven by demand, not supply." He states that the Crown lands do not have a forestry management plan in place that takes into consideration the full range of biodiversity that is essential for a healthy forest and sustainable harvesting. A significant omission in the policy, Coon believes, is the exemption of wood chips from the definition of biomass. He explains, "I think we're seeing opposition from the industry. They see low-grade pulpwood for biomass C when sometime in the future the industry might want that supply for something else C diverted from forestry products to energy products."

Chrystiane Mallaley, communications officer for the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, seeks to clarify the biomass chips question by stating, "Wood chips are not included because they are generally the byproduct of a sawmill or chipping process and derived from sawlogs or pulpwood that industry pays royalties on as part of their Crown allocation." Mallaley also provides the biomass definition as described in the policy: "Forest biomass consists of all the above ground components of a tree that are not identified under the current Department of Natural Resources utilization standards for Crown land C including tree tops, branches, foliage, non-merchantable woody stems of trees and shrubs, pre-existing dead woody material and flail chipping residue."

The oil drain

The future of biomass as a dynamic contributor to Maine and Washington County's economic development has yet to be realized. But a 2007 study conducted by the nonprofit Northern Forest Center calculated that fossil fuel payments removed $6 billion annually from the economies of the Northern Forest Region (rural northern parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York). The report also noted that for every $10 increase per barrel of oil, an additional $1 billion drains from the region.

Milt Ross, rural development area loan specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development's office based in Presque Isle, noted during the seminar that a conservative multiplier effect would be four. Thus the $6 billion spent in 2007 on fossil fuels, if used to produce and supply regional biomass fuels, would have had a minimum estimated value of $24 billion that would have directly benefited the region.