Imagine a biomass fuel that:

• Produces more biomass per acre (20-25 dry tons) than any other non-food biomass plan,
• Can be grown on a wide variety of soil types and under a wide range of climatic conditions,
• Reaches harvest-able maturity in 18 months and may be harvested every 9 months,
• Has a plant lifespan of 25 years,
• Does not require tillage, fertilizer or pesticide.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Not if you are familiar with Arundo donax. You will certainly here more about this wonder-plant since several companies, including local company TreeFree Biomass Solutions, have figured out how to grow the plant as a crop.

For more information here is an article from North American Clean Energy magazine.

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If you thought that forests were a rural phenomena, you will find the data compiled by a Dovetail Partners report eye-opening. In their report, Urban Wood Utilization and Industrial Clusters, they describe the growth of the urban forest in the lower 48 states from an area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire in 2000 to the size of Montana in 2050.

Equally interesting is the discussion about the volume of wood, removed annually from urban forests. The amount is significant — from 16 to 38 million green tons per year. This is more than the total annual harvests from America’s National Forests. Yes, you read that correctly.

This report focuses on an emerging urban wood-based industrial (business) cluster in the Minneapolis-St. Paul (Twin Cities) metropolitan area. Examples of Twin Cities’ cluster-based wood utilization activities and corresponding cluster-building techniques are highlighted. Recommendations for advancing wood utilization activities on a community-wide basis are offered.

The complete report may be found here.

If you wonder what the future might hold for renewable energy markets, one needs look no further than Sweden. Surprising to those in the US, biomass has now surpassed oil to become the number one source for energy in Sweden. The Swedish government has set the bar even higher — according to the Wood Resource Quarterly, Sweden is targeting 50% of all energy coming from renewable energy by 2020.

Contrast Sweden’s 32% biomass utilization with the United States where only 3.8% (Lawrence Livermore Lab) of our energy comes from our biomass resources. This paints a pretty dismal picture of the US policy on biomass-based energy utilization, especially when one looks at the plentiful resources the country offers.

A map of US private and public forest land

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“The giant oil companies, when left to their own devices, will treat even the most magnificent of nature’s wonders like a sewer,” writes Bob Herbert in his New York Times editorial “Disaster in the Amazon.”He concludes, “The riches to be made are so vastly corrupting, that governments refuse to impose the kinds of oversight and safeguards that would mitigate the damage to the environment and its human and animal inhabitants.”

It strikes me that this characterization holds an underlying truth about energy production in general, including green technologies – not even solar power is exempt. Over the past five years, the price surge for polysilicon–the building block for the sunlight capturing wafers used in solar power–led to catastrophic environmental impacts at production sites in China, the largest supplier of solar panels to North America and the world. As this situation illustrates, without life-cycle transparency ‘clean energy’ can be very dirty.

With transparency, significant gains over traditional fuels can be achieved. An insightful study, Emissions from Solar Photovoltaic Life Cycles,led by the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory found that, when well regulated, producing electricity from solar cells reduces air pollutants by up to 90 percent in comparison to using conventional fossil fuel technologies.

If you live in New York state and were not aware of the discussion going on around wood boiler regulation, you better start paying attention! According to the Watertown Daily Times, the NY Department of Environmental Conservation would require that units be installed 100 feet from neighbors property line and with stacks that are 18 feet tall.

While chimney pipe is not inexpensive, perhaps the more troubling fact for existing wood boiler or outdoor wood furnace owners is that existing units will need to be retired by either 2015 or 2020. Take a look at this article for more information.

If you have ever wondered about the current state of research and development of technologies for utilizing wood for the production of energy, your wait is over.

A new report from the University of Tennessee Office of Bioenergy Programs and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities reviews the current state of R&D of technologies which utilize wood for the production of energy. It is a rather substantial and worthwhile read if you are curious about what the coming years may bring to woody biomass based industry. The report characterizes industry process designs, stage of development or commercialization, and suitability for the marketplace.

Go here to download a copy of  “Wood to Energy: A State of the Science and Technology” (PDF)

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