Mining the Soil for Biomass Energy

Mining the Soil for Biomass Energy - Thursday, April 16 at 1 pm PT / 4 ET

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"460","attributes":{"alt":"logging in white river national forest colorado","class":"media-image","height":"360","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]Jon Rhodes, watershed hydrologist, has more than thirty years of professional experience evaluating the impacts of logging and road building on forest ecosystems and watersheds. Jon runs Planeto Azul Hydrology, which provides affordable watershed expertise for a wide variety of conservation efforts.

Call in on Thursday, April 16 at 1 pm PT / 4 ET to learn about the impacts of "fire fuels reduction" and biomass energy logging on forest soils, a precious resource thousands of years in the making and the foundation of forest ecosystems.

Save America's Forests and Wild Lands from Anti-Environmental Congress

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"436","attributes":{"alt":"save america's forests","class":"media-image","height":"189","style":"width: 197px; height: 189px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"197"}}]]The logging, grazing, mining and other extractive industries are mounting an intense attack on our nation's public lands. 
 
The December 2014 lame duck session of Congress saw an ugly brew of anti-conservation initiatives removing legal conservation protection from millions of acres of public lands. But this was just the tip of the oncoming extractive industries iceberg.
 
With Republican capture of the Senate in the 2014 election, the goal of the ultra right wing to privatize public lands may soon become reality. Representative Peter DeFazio’s legislation to virtually privatize and allow clearcutting on one million acres of federal land in Oregon could pass into law in the new Congress and become a model for the rest of our public lands. This anti-conservation juggernaut must be stopped. The landmark environmental and conservation laws that for a half century gave some protection to our public lands are eroding, and will disappear like the glaciers in Glacier National Park or the polar ice caps unless we, the hardcore grassroots, unite and fight back in a coordinated national campaign. 

Soil is Not Renewable

- by Friends of the Wild Swan and Swan View Coalition
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"424","attributes":{"alt":"Private Land Soil Erosion in Oakridge, Oregon","class":"media-image","longdesc":"soil erosion on private land Oakridge, Oregon","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Soils are the foundation of terrestrial life. Forest productivity is directly tied to soil conditions. Soil takes thousands of years to develop and is not "renewable"on a human time scale. Soil is an ecosystem in itself that must be healthy in order to provide for healthy forests, grasslands, and aquatic systems. Actions impacting such complex systems are prone to unintended consequences. Given the life-support role soils play, special care and prudence are essential.  
 
The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) prohibits "irreversible damage" to soils as well as "substantial and permanent impairment of productivity of land." Loss of soil (erosion) and displacement clearly cause "irreversible damage" and "permanent impairment of productivity of land." Loss of coarse woody debris causes soil damage that can last a century or more. Soil compaction negatively impacts soil productivity, overland flow, erosion, stream sedimentation, and late season flows. Soil compaction from logging can persist 50 – 80 years. 

Hardwood Trees Chipped for Nova Scotia Biomass

- by Roger Taylor, February 26, 2015, Herald Business

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"407","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 444px; height: 251px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Aaron Beswick/Truro Bureau"}}]]Hardwood trees are being allowed to go up in smoke, and with them a number of rural manufacturing jobs that are hard to replace.

It is easy to reach that conclusion after reading stories about several companies in rural Nova Scotia that have been making products from hardwood.

Just recently, the inability to access enough local hardwood was one of the reasons given by the owners of River’s Bend Wood Products Inc. for shutting down their flooring plant.

The factory in rural Antigonish County once employed 17 workers, but that number has been slowly whittled away. Now the remaining 11 employees will lose their jobs at the mill.

Study: Logging Destabilizes Forest Soil Carbon

- by John Cramer, December 2, 2014, Dartmouth College

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"322","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Logging doesn't immediately jettison carbon stored in a forest's mineral soils into the atmosphere but triggers a gradual release that may contribute to climate change over decades, a Dartmouth College study finds.

The results are the first evidence of a regional trend of lower carbon pools in soils of harvested hardwood forests compared to mature or pristine hardwood forests. The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy. A PDF of the study is available on request.

Despite scientists' growing appreciation for soil's role in the global carbon cycle, mineral soil carbon pools are largely understudied and previous studies have produced differing results about logging's impact. For example, the U.S. Forest Service assumes that all soil carbon pools do not change after timber harvesting.

Bioenergy Corporation to Cut and Burn Public Forests in Washington

- by Kate Prengaman, October 29, 2014 Yakima Herald-Republic

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"300","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 264px; height: 264px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Scientists are searching for the fuels of the future in high-tech laboratories around the world, but last week one research team debuted its new technology at a wood-chipping plant tucked in the forest outside Cle Elum.

That's because their technology runs on wood chips.

Roasting the wood, which might be otherwise worthless, at high temperatures without oxygen, creates a bio-oil similar to petroleum and a flammable gas that can be captured to run the burners. It also produces bio-char, a charcoal-like material that has applications in agriculture as a soil additive and in water filtration.

The state Department of Natural Resources hosted this demonstration because it's seeking solutions to Eastern Washington's biggest forest health problem: dense forests in need of thinning to reduce wildfire and disease risks, which is expensive work.

"When we are talking with landowners about how to improve their forest's health, (it) involves removing small trees and oftentimes that material doesn't have much of an economic value," said Chuck Hersey, a DNR forest health specialist who organized the event with a Utah-based company that developed the technology.

"This technology is one potential pathway for dealing with small, low-grade trees," Hersey said. "It's basically turning woody biomass into more dense, renewable energy products that have a higher value than just wood products."

Is Biomass All It's Cut Up to Be?

- by Howard Brown, October 17, 2014, Summit Daily
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"292","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"360","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]One possible reason for sticking to the ill-advised Ophir Mountain and other clear-cutting plans is that the clear-cut trees would go to the biomass power plant in Gypsum. Biomass power is renewable energy. It wouldn’t justify destroying Summit County’s wonderful forests and trails, but biomass is green energy right? Maybe not.
 
Is biomass power a good renewable energy source that we should promote here in Colorado? To answer this, we need to back up and look at where biomass energy comes from. As with most of our energy sources, it starts with energy from the sun. In photosynthesis, plants use solar energy to convert water and carbon dioxide to carbohydrates. Energy is stored in the carbon-hydrogen bonds. (Geologic pressure over time strips the oxygen from plant material to create hydrocarbon fossil fuels.) When animals metabolize carbohydrates, or when plant or fossil fuel material combusts (burns), that energy is released as oxygen combined with the material, returning to the lower-energy carbon-oxygen and hydrogen-oxygen bonds of carbon dioxide and water.
 
The problem with fuels such as coal and wood is that they are solids. The combustion process requires direct contact between oxygen molecules and molecules of the fuel. For gaseous fuels such as natural gas, that is very easy, individual oxygen molecules readily mix directly with individual methane molecules. For liquid fuels such as petroleum products, vegetable oil or ethanol, that mixing is more difficult and the resulting combustion less efficient. With solid fuels, however, it is exceedingly difficult for individual oxygen molecules to contact individual fuel molecules, so the combustion process is incomplete and far less efficient.
 
As a result, much less energy is produced per amount of fuel. This both generates more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases per amount of energy generated and makes the fuel far less valuable. With its low value as a fuel, biomass can only be an economic fuel if it is inexpensive and very close to the power plant. Indeed, nearly all [a significant and increasing percentage of biomass facilities transport wood from elsewhere. -Ed.] current commercial biomass power uses waste biomass sources burned right at the generation site (pulping liquid at paper mills, scrap at lumber mills and municipal solid waste at collection centers). Also, the incomplete combustion generates air emissions as well as ash.
 

Consequently, the future of biomass power lies with developing technologies to gasify or liquefy biomass, so that it can be burned more efficiently. This research closely parallels efforts to develop clean-coal technologies. Other biomass research focuses on developing fast-growing trees or grasses.

Gasification and liquefaction technologies are not here yet. You certainly don’t come to the mountains or the arid West for fast-growing trees. Cutting down natural forests and hauling the wood 60 miles hardly qualifies as using industrial waste materials at their source.

Colorado is blessed with great solar and wind resources. These are our best sources for renewable energy. Here and now, at the expense of losing Summit County’s beautiful forests and trails, is clearly not the place for biomass power.

Howard Brown lives near Silverthorne. While he has extensive environmental policy analysis experience at the federal, state and local levels, he attributes his expertise to observing and asking questions while enjoying Summit County’s beauty.

Thanks to NY Biomass Incinerator, Firewood More Difficult to Find

- by Pete Creedon, October 6, 2014, Watertown Daily Times

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"276","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 255px; height: 253px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Always nice to see a company come in an offer jobs and other things that will benefit the area it serves (“ReEnergy wins huge contract at Drum,” Sept. 30).

The question is, at what cost? The people this will affect in a negative way are a small group of people who for the most part will not receive any of the benefits of this biomass plant.

These people are the ones who heat their homes with wood. For the last couple of years as this plant has been coming online, it has become harder to find firewood and at a price that has not been inflated.

There was an article in the paper last year, I believe, how the firewood producers were saying that they have not cut back on firewood production in favor of wood chip production for this biomass plant. That is hard to believe. The company I get my firewood from, I know for a fact, supplies this plant.

Last year, it was difficult to find the wood I needed for last winter. The price was almost double what I spent the year before.

From Beetle Kill to Biomass

[More industry propaganda than a news article, but it demonstrates the biomass industry's  lust for National Forests to feed their dirty incinerators. -Ed.]

- by Ruth Heide, July 22, 2014, Valley Courier

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"220","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 244px; height: 181px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]There’s a different kind of “gold” in “them thar hills.”

It’s in the trees themselves.

Correctly harvested, the beetle kill timber that exists on public and private lands in the San Luis Valley could provide a gold mine for the biomass and other lumber industries while at the same time improving forest health.

Rio Grande National Forest Supervisor Dan Dallas told SLV County Commissioners Association officials yesterday there’s half-a-million acres of primarily spruce and fir in the Rio Grande National Forest alone that could be culled out. He said he has been trying to get something going to get rid of the dead trees during his entire tenure here, but it took columns of smoke that could be seen from Nebraska last year to really get people’s attention.

USDA Splurges Millions on Biomass Power Incinerators

[More taxpayer money funding private corporations to log National Forests under the unscientific guise of "wildfire prevention." -Ed.]

-  US Department of Agriculture, July 23, 2014, Office of Communications

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"234","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 167px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has selected 36 energy facilities in 14 states to accept biomass deliveries supported by the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP), which was authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill. Biomass owners who supply these facilities may qualify for BCAP delivery assistance starting July 28, 2014.

Of the total $25 million per year authorized for BCAP, up to 50 percent ($12.5 million) is available each year to assist biomass owners with the cost of delivery of agricultural or forest residues for energy generation. Some BCAP payments will target the removal of dead or diseased trees from National Forests and Bureau of Land Management public lands for renewable energy, which reduces the risk of forest fire.