Yes, you read the headline correctly, some are predicting that wood fuel is ready to make a big move similar to oil’s rise from $20 to $150 a barrel.

According to the Globe and Mail, there are lots of reasons to be bullish, some more obvious than others:

• Demand is up in China, which recently changed its building codes to favor lumber.
• Environmental regulations in Europe are driving the change from coal-fired power plants to biomass-fired plants.
• In North America, the rate of change is slower, but regulations and emerging biomass combustion technologies, like Greenwood’s CrossFire™ Combustion are making biomass a more attractive option for heating.

So, what does that mean for you and me? When you look out your kitchen window in the morning or take that drive through the countryside to look at the beautiful fall colors, don’t be mistaken, there is gold in the forest.

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According to the latest United Nations report, nearly 80% of the global energy supply could be met by renewable energy by 2050 if backed by the correct public policies. The six renewable energy technologies reviewed include bioenergy, solar, power, geothermal power, hydropower, ocean energy, and wind energy, with more than 160 existing scientific use cases evaluated.

There is more information in the report than we could share here, but there are some interesting and relevant insights that for those interested in biomass energy:

• Most current bioenergy systems, including advanced liquid biofuels, result in GHG emission reductions.
• The sustainability of bioenergy, in particular in terms of life cycle GHG emissions, is influenced by land and biomass resource management practices.
• Modern biomass, wind and direct solar currently make up the largest contributions of renewable energy technologies to the energy system and biomass will continue to play a central role through 2050.

The report’s findings are summarized in the “Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation.” The report summarizes a thousand-page comprehensive assessment compiled by more than 120 leading experts from all over the world for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC).

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In a recent blog post covered by The Daily Energy Report, Sohbet Karbuz writes about the energy consumption in the US military. He shares some interesting facts from his research which shed light on the hidden costs of our armed forces.

In 2009, the Department of Defense consumed 932 trillion BTUs of energy. This equates to 2 percent of the US energy consumption and more than 93 percent of government energy use. If they were a nation, they would be the 36th largest consumer of energy. However, less than half of oil consumption is in the continental United States. Looking deeper into our area of interest, space heating,  the military consumes over 200 trillion BTUs of energy in buildings annually.

The military is acutely aware of these figures and while they comprise less than 2 percent of the Defense Department budget, the Defense Secretary has identified energy as one of the department’s top 25 priorities. The DoD is already a leader in a number of alternative energy areas and continues to search for alternatives so that it can reduce its reliance on oil and improve our energy security.

For more information about this topic visit the post here.

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According to a recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining (Biofpr), the wood pellet market is booming in Europe. In 2009, pellet production in Europe was greater than 10 million metric tons from approximately 650 pellet plants. Like most energy fuels, wood pellet prices are increasing.

After Europe, North America has the largest pellet production capacity, which grew from 1.1 million metric tons in 2003 to 6.2 million in 2009.

The report indicates that EU 2020 policy for renewable energy sources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission will drive the market development. With these policies in place, the authors forecast that the demand, in Europe alone, for woody biomass will vary between 105 million metric tons to 300 metric tons — a 10 to 30 fold increase over the next nine years.

With this type of growth, the report states, “Public support is needed to cover the additional costs of capital investment, operation and maintenance of renewable energy equipment, and pellet fuel feedstock, in comparison with their fossil fuel alternatives.”

Watching from afar, there are several observations we can make about the contrasts in perspective — First, with such wide-spread adoption of the use of woody biomass fuels, public perception of wood heating must be quite positive. Secondly, with the rich natural resource supply here in North America, where is the U.S. policy and mindset on this topic?

Sadly, here in the U.S., woody biomass is still the forgotten step-child in the alternative energy discussion.

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Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released the BioEnergy Atlas, a Web portal that provides access to bio-energy analysis and mapping tools. The visualization tools, BioPower and BioFuels Atlas, allow users to view related bio-energy data on a single map. Some of these data include biomass feedstocks, bio-power and biofuels potential, production and distribution.

The site makes the mountains of data collected by the EPA, DOE and USDA accessible and sheds some light on the significant potential of biomass energy in the United States.

The BioEnergy Atlas is accessible here.

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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 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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With fuel prices where they are these days, there is a lot of talk about domestically available options. One type of fuel that is central to the debate is biofuel. You may recognize them by their other names – ethanol, biodiesel, biocrude, methanol and methane to name a few.

Don’t freak out on me, this is not your high school chemistry class, but there are some big questions that arise that are still under debate and as consumers of the product/byproduct it is important that we understand what is being discussed.

Central to the biofuel discussion are two fundamental debates:

1. Energy and Food Supply. Early biofuel supplies were built using a corn and other food supply feedstocks. Should energy products compete with the food supply?
2. Energy Conversion. Biofuels are created from organic material (e.g. corn, switchgrass & crop residues). What amount of energy is required to create the fuel from these feedstocks? If the amount of energy required to produce the fuel is less than the output from the resulting fuel, is it worthwhile? The conversation is a bit heated.

These are not simple questions. However, their answers are arguably simple – each resource should be used to provide its greatest return. In the questions we ask above — I would argue that food supply should remain as food supply. We can use the crop residue for energy. As far as energy conversion, I don’t need to look any further than modern biomass heating options with efficiencies greater than 70% (per US standards). Until the economics or science indicate otherwise perhaps we should be selective in our choice of the feedstocks for biofuels.

As someone who has made it this far, implies some level of interest, so I encourage you to take a look at this resource from Farm Credit of Canada that provides an overview on the biofuel discussion.

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