Posted on 09/26/2011 1:59:56 PM PDT by GSWarrior
The dead wood of Colorados lodgepole pine forest should be harnessed as biomass energy before it becomes fuel for a conflagration, a former Aspen mayor said.
One way to do that could be a biomass project in Eagle County, where a Provo, Utah, company is considering construction of a 10-megawatt plant.
Dean Rostrom, principal of Evergreen Clean Energy LLC, will discuss plans for a plant at a regional biomass summit from 12:45 to 4:45 p.m. Wednesday in the Carbondale town hall.
The denuded lodgepole forest covering 4.2 million acres is becoming more dangerous, not less, as trees killed by the mountain pine beetle fall at the rate of thousands a day, said John Bennett, the former Aspen mayor who now is the executive director of For the Forest.
Fire danger from a massive beetle kill such as the one in Colorado is high as the trees turn red and the timber goes dry, Bennett said. The threat of fire, however, lessens as the needles fall and the trees become gray skeletons, he said.
About five to eight years later, the trees begin to fall and create a pile of timber on the forest floor. Thats when the fire danger goes back up, and it stays high for 20 or 30 years, Bennett said. Some parts of the forest in Colorado are approaching that latter phase.
Converting those dead trees into biomass to generate electricity or serve as an alternative fuel, however, could provide the economic impetus to clean up dead timber from around roads, highways, communities, waterways and transmission corridors, Bennett said.
This could create the market financing for the forest restoration urgently needed around the state, Bennett said.
The summit will look at opportunities and obstacles to development as they have been studied by the Roaring Fork Biomass Consortium.
A $100,000 feasibility study conducted by the consortium looked at existing supplies of woody and non-woody biomass, the relationship of biomass handling to greenhouse gas emissions, technology, tree farming and education.
Converting dead lodgepole pine into biomass fuels provides the opportunity to create energy without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, Bennett said.
Decomposing dead wood adds mightily to greenhouse gases, so converting the trees to fuel reduces the threat of climate change, Bennett said. It also offers an avenue to energy independence, a critically important step, Bennett said.
How about dead , marxist ideas? we have no shortage of those.
Converting dead lodgepole pine into biomass fuels provides the opportunity to create energy without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, Bennett said.
Decomposing dead wood adds mightily to greenhouse gases, so converting the trees to fuel reduces the threat of climate change, Bennett said. It also offers an avenue to energy independence, a critically important step, Bennett said.
Do they not teach the carbon cycle in schools anymore?
Removing it might inconvenience some bug, rat or other vermin...not acceptable! < /EPA response >
I support using the wood and don't believe the man-made global warming myth.
That said, burning the wood or letting it decompose is the same release of CO2, just on different time scales.
Trees? No, the lifting needs to start by putting Obama out of a job. Quickly followed by his record-level of Marxist mobsters some call “czars”. Followed by an executive order by the new President basically defunding and neutering Obamacare.
Sell your gold (if you bought it as a profit maker) just before that, and get ready to enjoy some dividend checks from your investments.
Biomass? Forget about it. Think of the upside to America the above will generate.....
I didn’t get from the article whether they intended to use pyrolysis, gasification, or simply burn the wood...
Any of those will produce CO2 as a product when electricity is produced, and therefore will be opposed by the “save the erf” crowd.
So... how much biomass could we get out of 0bama?
Fossil fuel powered vehicles will be required to go into the forest and bring the fallen trees out for processing.
Energy will be required to process the fallen trees into biomass fuels.
Biomass fuels will then (likely) be combusted to "create energy."
I live in an agricultural area. We have lots of orchards and just about everything else you can think of. We also have a large biomass plant that burns the wood, hulls and other bio media. It seems to make a lot of sense, but I don’t know the economics of it.
It should not take a huge government grant and subsidies to turn dead trees into “biomass.” Isn’t Evergreen one of those outfits Obama has been funding?
I suggest using private loggers and cutting it up for firewood.
If they want biomass, how about making it from the pine beetles? Or would PETA object?
These same folks don't want the trucker to drive too long and they don't want them ruining the forests with the smelly diesel. What do they want?
I don’t think any of the morons who come up with these ideas ever held a real job or took a business course. Even a cursory examination of the costs versus return are so out of whack that only a government bureaucrat would even offer the suggestion. Lets do a quick check of the costs: energy costs to cut the trees down, gather and move them off the mountains (lodge pole pines do not grow in the flatlands), truck them to the mill, chip the trees into small pieces, apply heat to the decomposition process, etc. What you end up with is $8.00 a gallon ethanol. Only a gigantic government subsidy could make it possible.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18542712
Given that this guy was mayor of Aspen, I suppose his solution is have the government subsidize yet another industry the market won't support.
How about whale oil?
I was going to say "SHA-ZAAM!", but I'm afraid I'm missing something.
Yep.
And Dr. Thomas Sowell is going to show up at my front door today and ask me to marry him!! XXOO
The money to be made is in the grant money to do the study, not in the actual project. Think of all the fossil fuels that would be used to haul dead trees to a plant.
If it needs subsidized, its not going to “lift the economy”.
Just a tip.
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