There has been a lot of focus on developing woody biomass projects recently.  President Obama has directed the DOE to develop biomass as part of their sustainable energy options.  Brian Baird, who chairs the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, held a hearing on wood products biofuels, also called woody biomass, last month.  Washington State, under the leadership of Peter Goldmark, is moving to incorporate woody biomass into their forest health program.

Before we rush to develop these woody biomass projects, let’s understand what it would take to make this new energy source really effective in all ways, including use of our scarce tax dollars.

Biomass starts with making use of biologically generated fibrous matter, including grasses, brush, corn stalks, and forest waste products.  The last, usually called “woody biomass” makes use of thinning trees and cutting down insect-infested branches and other damaged trees from forest restoration projects and then using it to provide fodder for alternative energy projects.  All are good but some are great – and provide the kind of win-win-win solutions that are so desperately needed if we are to pull ourselves out of our myriad of difficulties. 

Leaving Energy Sources on the Table

Let’s begin with an example of not taking advantage of the range of 20-40 tons/per acre of woody biomass culled from restoring our forests.  A recent article in the Seattle Times by Hal Bernton described a forest restoration program the U.S. Forest Service is developing in Oregon and Washington.

As part of the Stimulus Package, the U.S. Forest Service is spending about $95 million in Oregon and Washington to put loggers to work doing critical forest restoration work, fire prevention work that often unfortunately falls off the list of what there is money for.   Doing this now, when it can provide jobs for otherwise unemployed rural folks is great.  

However, they only get a win-win out of it – clear out the forests, which helps prevent forest fires, and provide needed jobs for rural workers.  What do they do with the waste products, the woody biomass?  According to the Seattle Times article, Melcher Logging, who is doing the forest restoration in Sisters, Oregon, is having a hard time selling the thinned trees to our diminishing number of mills and so they usually burn it!

Here’s where they are missing that third “win”.   The Forest Service could be offsetting their expenses, providing more local jobs and, rather than releasing gases that cause further climate change, could be providing energy for rural areas with this woody biomass.  They could either make pellets out of the waste products for local energy consumption or use innovative processes that create bio-oil and bio-char for energy and agricultural use.  Instead, they are contributing to greenhouse gas release by burning the waste. 

Forest Fires and Forest Health

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages 2.2 million acres of Washington state forests and is responsible for fighting fires on 12 million acres of state and private forest. 

Forest health/restoration is a key aspect of long-term fire prevention.  The DNR, on their website, says that more than 13% of annual forest growth is lost to diseases each year. Insect and disease-killed trees are now the norm in eastern Washington.  In email exchanges with Aaron Everett of the DNR, I learned that the severity of forest fires is higher in areas that are already damaged by diseases. Over the past six years, insects and diseases have killed or damaged trees on an average of 1.8 million acres per year. 

Fighting forest fires is hugely expensive to the state and growing more expensive year by year.  The DNR sets aside $30-32 million every year for fire suppression.  The federal government helps out with the cost as well when the fires are extensive.  The DNR also has a risk reduction program to assess where the risks of fires are greatest and then concentrate on 1) fire prevention - working with local agencies and landowners to prevent fires and 2) forest health - thinning and removing damaged trees and limbs and forest materials off the ground so as to prevent fires and preserve a healthy forest.  The DNR will spend $5.4 million a year on both fire prevention and forest health with $5 million of that going to the first, working with folks to prevent forest fires in populated areas. 

A fully sustainable forestry program would focus more resources on #2 – forest health, in a manner which has been shown to be cost efficient over many years in reducing forest fires but which requires spending money up front.  

Why Focusing on Forest Health is Cost-Effective

In a paper written in 2004, Larry Mason, Bruce Lippke & Kevin Zobrist, economists and professors with the Rural Technology Institute at the University of Washington, wrote one of several papers laying out the economic reasons for putting money into forest health.  They said, “the future risk of catastrophic fire on the National Forests of the inland west is far costlier to the public than investments made today to protect against such eventuality”.  Specifically, there is a net benefit of fuel removal of hazardous forest waste (after subtraction of operations costs) of $1,483 per acre for high-risk acreage and $688 per acre for moderate-risk acreage.  These benefits accrue because removing damaged trees and branches prevents forest fires that would otherwise be expected to occur in the next 30 years, more likely in high-risk areas and moderate-risk areas than in non-damaged forests.  When the authors analyzed inventory data from two of the largest national forests in Washington and Oregon, the Okanogan and the Fremont National Forests, they found that 75% of the total forest area fit one of those two categories. 

Add in the Benefits of Biomass

IWF, our Institute here, has worked for years to sustain rural economies, planning and creating new projects that increase economic opportunity, improve quality of life, and reduce environmental impacts, projects that help rural communities make the most of whatever sustainable economic development they are doing.  For three years, IWF was the administrator for a U.S. Forest Service forest restoration demonstration project that employed 13 workers and restored 400 acres to healthy conditions. 

Working with the Washington State Department of Commerce, Trade and Economic Development (CTED), IWF conducted a feasibility study that found that 1) biomass that is readily converted to wood pellets is the best renewable energy source for North Central Washington and 2) a small-scale fast pyrolysis plant that will produce commercial bio-oil and bio-char is potentially economically feasible for the area.  Either use of biomass provides additional money to the economy, thus further offsetting the costs of the forest health work.

On smaller-scale projects, small rural businesses can convert the biomass from forest restoration projects to the production of wood pellets which can be used in both institutional burners for schools, other rural institutions and private homes in rural areas where other types of renewable energy are hard to find.  On larger projects, it is likely that companies can bring in innovative, sometimes mobile, fast pyrolysis plants that will produce two useful commercial products – bio-oil for use in industrial boilers and bio-char for agriculture – plus a non-condensable gas that will supply a major part of the energy required by the process itself, thus making it nearly or wholly self-sufficient.

Closing Thought

We are smart enough in this country to conduct our business in such a way that we get “win-win-win” results.  During our long years of prosperity driven by “cheap” supplies of fossil fuel, we have not felt the need to bother trying to find the best solutions for the most people.  That’s what we get to do now.  Here in the Northwest, one of our options for multiplying our resources lies in the smart use of woody biomass.  There are many more.