Posted on 09/26/2011 1:59:56 PM PDT by GSWarrior
The dead wood of Colorado’s 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. That’s 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.
I live surrounded by lodgepole. We have dead trees everywhere on forest service land.
The totals for 2009 for all energy was, 3,950,331 Megawatts.
Sorry about that. link: http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html
Thanks GSWarrior.
They will have to build biomass plants a hell of a lot closer than Utah to make it.
The Escanaba MI Paper mill uses wood residue nearly exclusively now and produces enough power to light a city the size of Green Bay Wisconsin. Yet they cant sell any excess because hey are not licensed to do so. So they simply shut the turbine’s’ down.
It costs around 17 dollars a ton to chip and deliver wood residue to that plant. Its cleaner than coal, and when mixed with spent black liquor, is more economical than coal or fuel.
Couple of years ago WE energies wanted to put in a boiler to produce more power for the grid. It was canned because of the enivironMENTALISTS objections to the project. Another firm wanted to put a spent black liquor plant in to refine that into bio fuel-about 13 million gallons of bio gas and diesel a year, and out of a by product of the paper making process. It was also canned because of the EPA.
Firewood? What are you going to burn it in? Since they can no longer sell wood fired boilers for home use. That is right..the EPA has Banned the sale of wood fired boilers for home use. You know...the outside wood fired boilers. The ones you could use to not only heat your home but your hot water in the winter also. Next year, they will include any wood fired appliance..that means wood stoves of any sort.
why don’t we just drill our own oil and gas—providing many jobs
and we wouldn’t be sending money overseas for oil and defending their oil fields.
Here in MI we burn peach and cherry pits post processing. Nice clean fuel.
Again, the biggest cause IF it is a problem is water vapor, everything else is negligible.
People would have gladly gone and cut up the logs and hauled them off for firewood--at their own expense. The bettle kill disaster has been slowly unfolding since the Clinton Administration and is a 'poster child' for the difference between conservation and stewardship versus kneejerk environmentalism.
Too late. We saved the whales starting back when Mr. Drake dug that well in PA. Otherwise, the last one would have been burned in a lamp in Nantuckett long ago...
How can it make sense to you if you don't know the facts and, therefore, don't understand the situation?
Dontcha love the way we're going backwards, though? They are closing coal burning power plants and 'studying' woodburners. Now doesn't that just sum up the progressive movement?
Converting them into biomass fuels? They must be making pellets for pellet stoves of somesuch, and if you factor in electricity or other fuel, that just isn't going to be carbon neutral.
All this biomass, trees, hulls, etc., will still need to be removed and at least disposed in some manner, whether or not it's burned in a biomass plant. I used to go out to almond orchards thast were razed and pay the farmer $5 per tree and cut them up for firewood. No more, they're all being chipped and sent to the biomass plant. It still makes sense to me and I still don't know haw prifitable it is or isn't.
So... how much biomass could we get out of 0bama?
Not sure about the biom part but the ass part is a virtual perpetual motion machine.
>>So... how much biomass could we get out of 0bama?
A whole bunch if you count bovine manure as biomass.
Why, your back pocket, of course.
That depends on where you are located. The power plant we see to can’t get enough chips.
That depends on where you are located. The power plant we sell to can’t get enough chips.
I assume you are referring to methane's CONTRIBUTION to global warming. The fact that methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas is simply molecular physics (spectroscopy) based on how much light is absorbed and in which spectral regions, which is a different matter.
Methane's CONTRIBUTION to the warming effect is based on both its spectroscopic properties, but on its concentration in the atmosphere.
And of course, water vapor "is" far and away THE biggest factor in global warming. And to global cooling (but not as vapor).
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