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Like timber before it, some view biomass as more than just trees - it offers the promise of new jobs and a different approach to forest management. In the Northwest the process of converting energy from organic materials begins with wood, and as some lawmakers see it, ends with Oregon being a world leader in a new form of energy.
2011 has been a good year for biomass proponents so far. Oregon lawmakers from both sides of the aisle praised a three-year extension by the Environmental Protection Agency to allow biomass development to continue without tough restrictions. Governor Kitzhaber supports biomass as a renewable energy source, and has put the implementation of biomass high on his agenda. Negotiations have been going on for months about a plan to convert Portland General Electric's Boardman power plant from being coal-fired to burning biomass.
However, not everyone sees biomass as a sustainable source of energy. Some worry that biomass leads to deforestation. Others have concerns that biomass may emit more greenhouse gasses than coal.
Oregon faces a $3.5 billion budget shortfall, but state officials see the renewable energy market - including biomass - as something worth investing in.
Should more taxpayer money be dedicated to a future in biomass? What do you think are the promises and consequences of biomass? What should lawmakers consider about the science and ecnonomy of biomass?
GUESTS:
- Steve Corson - Spokesperson for Portland General Electric
- Meg Sheehan - Director of the Biomass Accountability Project
- David Van't Hof - Renewable energy attorney at Lane Powell
- Mark McCauley - Director of general services for Clark County
Tagged as: biomass · energy · renewable
Photo credit: Sam Beebe / Creative Commons
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Everything I have read on this subject seems to state the actual amount of energy this source can contribute is a fraction of our needs. It also requires that much of biomass that is in current use be switched away to use in producing these fuels. Whether or not its alternative use as biomass fuel conversion is economically competitive with present use is still to be determined. As with coal or oil sands or any other alternative to oil, the envionmental impact, including greenhouse gases must be addressed. Keep in mind the energy that must be used to harvest, haul and process these materials must also be factored in. For some portion of those processess petroleum products must be burned.
If these energy penalty costs prove to be on the same order of impact and cost to mitigate as coal/oil sands, etc, biomass will end up like wind power, and solar, subsidized and still a fractional source of energy.
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fascinating conversation, thanks! i wonder if biomass doesn't pan out as an energy source, if biochar, a similar process employed for carbon sequestration that prodces a high grade fertilizer/soil amendment would be a good alternative
we need to break our dependency on oil for fertilizer as well, but it doesn't supply the most important nitrogen or phosphorus, as far as i know. still, is should qualify for organic food protocol and there are other non-petrol organic sources for these nutrient
removing brush from wild lands would need to be dependent on consistent effective deterrents for both businesses and government officials allowing the taking of beneficial plants (or animals?) that should not be used to make biomass energy or biochar soil amendment, including prison time, when appropriate, of corse! we don't want all of oregon to be a desert or even any additional environmental degradation because of this process run amuck. if this cannot be assured by top officials, we must scrape these plans completely
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar#Positive_and_Negative_Effects_on_Soil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar#Co-benefits_for_soil_of_pyrolysis
shody
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Food vrs fuel. It will come down to that decision sooner or later as the global population continues expanding So will the necessity of feeding the coming generations. Biomass sounds like a solution, but is not a sustainable source. It remains to be seen whether the energy derived is greater or lesser than the energy required to make it into a clean useful fuel. Or whether or not this use of land resources is more economical than its use for other purposes.
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One of the components of using a fuel is it's BTU rating, how efficently it burns. How comparable is giant cane to coal. Could it be combined with natural gas as a fuel to make it more efficent or if their is fluctuation in cane supply?
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We have much to learn whether biomass will be beneficial or harmful long term.
Laidlaw Energy Group has implemented biomass energy production in the Northeast U.S. LLEG faces hurdles like NIMBY and environmental regulation. It's expensive to build new electricity transmission infrastructure. The debate whether biomass will be sustainable and environmentally plausible continues.
http://www.laidlawenergy.com/
Germany has "swept their forests" for fuel for centuries. What is Germany doing that we could learn from? Also intrigued by "portable forests" used by paper mills for paper production. Could biomass energy producers lease land from farmers to grow "portable forests" for energy production?
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When working in Uganda in mid 1980s my organization initiated a comprehensive forestry program. One of the components was the development of community fuel lots- not unlike those in use in Europe for centuries. With the use of certain fast growing species and a method of harvesting that simply removes the fast growing limbs wile leaving the trunk and roots unaffected, these trees provide fuel for heating and cooking for a hundred yrs before requiring replacement. There were several other elements to this program, but the establishment of community ran nurseries and provision of appropriate trees for fuel lots was a major success.
But as we know, this kind of combustion carries with it its own kind of environmental costs. While it must be used in some situations, it is not a practical solution for the long haul. Not with a global population that will exceed 10 or more billions in your lifetime.
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"Biomass conversion" is weasel-speak for "garbage burning."
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I wouldn't be so sure about that -- some things that we wasteful humans discard are not combustible and will not burn. Mind! I do not excuse myself or anyone I know from that class -- we are all wasteful.
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Yes, biomass is one of the solutions to our problems. But it should be located in Portland, not Boardman. It makes no sense to truck our garbage up the gorge when a gasification plant could be located at one, or both of the metro transfer stations. We would reduce our waste volume by 95%, while also generating additional power and reducing the unnecessary resources devoted to trucking our waste.
Boardman should have remained as a coal plant where we really could have had a substantive impact in developing a real green industry in cleaning up coal. The proposal that PGE was pushing on cleaning up the coal plant was based upon technology developed in the 70's and 80's. It would have been very attainable to convert Boardman to output levels that would be lower than the gas fired plant that is going to take its place. The fix was always in on this one, PGE was just going through the motions in letting us think that we actually had any choices here. A completely wasted opportunity that will of course be funded by the rate payers. And the value of the PUC is?
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Please elaborate on your last paragraph. I think I agree that it would be to the good if we continued to learn better and better ways to clean up coal emissions. Seems like a wasted opportunity?
What was the "fix" that was in with PGE?
Thanks.
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Probably slightly inflammatory for me to term it by saying the "fix was always in". Let me explain. I think PGE is a fine company. They have great service, a reliable product, always striving to be an excellent corporate citizen, and they treat their employees very well. But at the same time: 1) they are somewhat a protected monopoly, 2) are guaranteed a fixed rate of return, and, 3) they can pass off their capital investments to the rate payers. Because of these characteristics, they are incredibly "risk averse". There is no incentive for them to even touch newer technologies, no matter how attractive. They also do not have to be concerned with lower cost options.
The legacy technology is basically a multi-stage process (electrostatic precipitator (ESP), flue gas desulfurization unit (FGD) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR). The newer technology utilizes different chemical reactions (proprietary) and offers an economy of scale because it can occur in a single stage process. Basically, more efficient and cheaper. The economy of scale is quite simple: You further cool down your discharge stream before cleansing (cooler air = a lower volume) and you do it in one stage, not 3. You therefore are investing in a smaller solution. It does necessitate more “resident” time, but you are still far ahead of the game because of the cooler air and single stage solution. But again, based upon the characteristics of PGE, they won’t touch this because there is no incentive (which is completely understandable on their part).
This is the type of green technology that I would like to see Oregon involved with.
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I'd like to see a way to rip out and grind up and pelletize sagebrush and juniper trees in eastern Oregon, while in the process restoring that area to the native grasslands that it was around 1900.
Nature used to burn it often with wildfires which would burn sagebrush and junipers down including the roots, killing them, while just burning the dry tops of grasses and leaving the bunch grass plants alive.
I'm sure that the BLM and USFS would welcome any ideas on how to do that and you would not need to regrow the sagebrush and juniper trees. In fact I bet that they would even pay some money to get rid of those problems and restore those areas for deer, antelope, quail, sagehens, and other wildlife.
Any ideas?
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Good you brought this up. Unfortunately, as you burn it you lose your future fuel source.
But as you say, we really could improve the range ecosystem if we just let nature run its' course and let it burn.
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Biomass is cleaner than coal, it's renewable, it's sustainable, it produces energy, creates jobs, and perhaps best of all promises to improve habitat by thinning forests. How green is that?
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The biomass PGE wants to burn at Bordman does not come from thinning forests. It would come from growing a highly invasive weed species.
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Unfortunately how green it is depends on lots of factors.
The most green would be a bio-fuel that was close, consistant in its' cemistry/emmissions, high in BTUs, minimal havesting and processing energy.
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The proposal as put forth by PGE is pure greenwashing.
The biomass they want to burn is harvested giant reed (Arundo donax) grown agriculturally specifically for that purpose.
Arundo donax is a major invasive species in California, and we do not need it infesting riparian areas in Oregon. The claims of PGE and the Oregon Department of Agriculture that it will not be invasive in Oregon because it has never set seed here before are specious; this plant very seldom reproduces by seed anywhere in North America. It spreads by rhizomes and fragments of rhizomes; this alone has enabled it to become a serious problem in California.
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Great topic! Biomass, in theory, is a great idea. It burns cleaner than coal (which we all know is extremely dirty), is a stable source of power, would avoid having people work in coal mines, the forest is in abundance - especially here in the NW. But at what cost? Biomass is great as long as it is harvested on a sustained basis - but that won't happen. How many times have we seen the human species overextend our resources?? Everyday. Does Oregon have sustainability provisions that will protect our forests? Why not put the money and resources to develop and create a source of energy that is actually renewable, sustainable, doesn't harm the ecology, creates jobs won't introduce in an invasive species, and won't be a net energy loser. Let's also not put all our eggs in one basket when comes to biomass as well. Let's not also call something "green" when it really isn't.
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All higher plants use all of the 15 or so essential plant nutrients, albiet in different ratios. Many are also capable if not inclined to take up certain elements that are not considered nutrients, i.e, lead, mercury, gold, silica etc..
All organic material, when burned creates ash. Ash is most variable between species, but even from the same species there is genetic variation. Add to this, variations in what is available in the root zone of an individual plant, and you can have significant variation. Thus, the fused ash of Douglas fir needles will tend to be a warm light brown, while the fused ash from Grand fir needles will tend to be a much darker chocolate brown. Manganese and Iron are the main colorants in both cases with variations. Douglas fir rarely exceeds 1% of either. Grand fir is almost always over 2%, (on my forested 10 acre plot), with and average closer to 4%, and some samples as much as 10%. [You might be at seriously risk for neurological consequences if you breathed to much Grand fir needle ash.]
Coal comes from plants, and contains the ash from those plants. There is every reason to suspect that if you sampled coal from different locations, even within the same coal deposit you would get a wide variation in compositions. Still, the variation may be less, than if we burned grass straw one month - with its' high silica ash - and then burned mixed conifer slash the next.
Bottom line: your feed stream needs some reasonable consistency in ash chemistry so you don't 'gum up' the boilers..., and the emmision controlers can work as designed. Lots of testing has to occur. It become a little more doable when the fuel source is concentrated as it is in coal. I suspect growing 'giant reed' is an attempt to solve a number of these problems.
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I was doing some consulting on a farm recently. Although they have done a lot of thing on this farm in the past 5 decades, with animals and berries and a variety of other things, the owners are now living out their retirement years growing a monoculture crop which is a perennial and requires a minimum of actual effort. The barns are perfectly organized museums of past Willamette Valley Productivity. The owners also have their kids living in other detached houses on the same property, and it was one of their kids that called me and wanted some help figuring out an organic garden scene for the farm.
As we walked past a threadbare chicken yard just uphill of 5 fallow acres that have been that way for a decade, I spied a huge pile of organic debris full of leaves and branches, three used cristmas trees, and all manner of debris that had been pulled out of the meager garden that had been nearby in the preceding year. i would estimate the size of the pile at 6-8 cubic yards.
I asked what it was and I was told it was the "burn pile". Later we would go into the house and reach past the woodstove to turn up the electric baseboard heat. And later still, we would talk about where the soil was going to come from to fill the terraced raised beds to be built on a perfectly southeast facing slope on the farm. No compost pile in sight on a farm with 3 families and 5 decades of farming experience. It is the "D" students that got left on the farm.
If we get a plethora of biomass facilities in place to burn organic waste we can just about kiss an organic future goodbye. If you think you can put a value on logging slash or the contents of a green bin in Portland, and then send people out to a logging site to harvest fuel or empty bins without fundamentally destroying the lowest tier of our entire farm/forest ecosystem.... well if you can imagine that you deserve to pay $20 for a pound for potatoes grown on chemically sterilized soil using fertilizer derived from fracked natural gas imported along a pipeline through the Timberline Lodge.
People harvesting logging slash for money will make Portland's "canners" digging through the recycling bins and scrappers stealing the wire from substations look like angels in comparison. They will take every single scrap of organic material they can get their hands on and burn it. It will be gone. Water will run through logged forests and into creeks and streams and destroy salmon habitat faster than a guy named Chuck with a saw named Stihl could ever think of destroying forest. We will all look like bigger chumps than even the folks in Iowa that thought you could fuel America's cars growing corn.
Limitless growth and expansion is impossible. Even the universe has an edge.
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If you have ever wondered why Mason Jars have two different sizes of lids the answer is conservation. At one time in the past the smaller lids cost 2-1/2 cents a piece less because they use less metal and after the first world war metal was in short supply. To people like my mom that lived through the war and the depression, and put up hundreds of quarts a year of all manner of farm produce; that could add up to $50. Real money in her day.
We need to get over the idea that we can just keep growing without limit.
I would imagine that for the cost of all of the salaries, together with the cost of office space; for all of the knotheads in government and industry and banking that think it would be a good idea to burn all of the organic material we need for other far more important things... well for that money we could probably give a 60% rebate on the purchase of good windows for the entire bottom two thirds of wage earners in the state.
All the drivers of this idea want is money. There is a reason the top 1% income bracket gets 16.4 cents of every dollar of GDP; and hoodwinking all of us with the promise of a dumb idea like this by calling it green and co-opting powerful dissenters is just how they do it.
Biomass is dirty, and it is an inefficient use of resources and we will be sorry if we let them sell us this idea.
Ask your grandma. Before they put another water drain on the mighty Columbia to grow switchgrass to burn for electricity, ask your grandma where the fertilizer came from on her parent's farm. Ask her what it looked like to see a free running river dammed. Ask her. Please. Ask her.
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Part 1
The burning of wood for fuel relegates wood to its absolutely lowest possible value -- wood as fuel means it can never be reused or recycled in any possible way.
If job creation is the goal, there are literally thousands upon thousands of possible wood products as durable consumer items (furniture, windows, doors etc) or industrial goods (pallets, truck decking, railroad cross-ties, etc) that already exist and could be manufactured from these resources instead of burning it. Instead of investing in converting Boardman to burn wood, those same monies could be invested in education and job training, the purchase of industrial machinery for local, sustainable businesses (that could employ many times more local individuals) and for marketing assistance to facilitate product sales.
Additionally, this concept of wood fuel for the Boardman plant would give control of huge volumes of natural resources to large corporations and would limit the amounts that might be used for local uses and entrepreneurial endeavors. By so empowering large corporations to have all the woody biomass necessary to fuel the fires of Boardman, I fear the actual "mining" of the forests (to the point that large industrial machinery would suck everything combustible off the land). If you think clearcuts are ugly now, "harvesting" woody biomass for fuel would be worse and greatly more destructive. The potential hunger to feed the hell fires of Boardman could ultimately denude massive amounts of the natural environments creating virtual deserts and barren mountainsides more vulnerable to soil erosion, dirty rivers, and higher soil and water temperatures. This type of corporate control of the forest resources would give horrific meaning to industrial forestry.
It is misinformation that a significant number of jobs would be created in such a corporate endeavor because large machinery (whole tree chippers) would be operated by single individuals. There might be plenty of jobs for truck drivers but all this truck traffic would fundamentally seriously degrade the roads because of all this truck traffic. If the objective is job creation, then train workers in highly skilled woodworking jobs who will use considerably less material and a higher level of added value per unit of resource.
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Wood has different classes based on species, grain, density, quality and strength. Not every kind of lumber or every part of the tree can be made into a heirloom rocking chair.
There are part of a tree like leaves, needles, branches, small branches, contorted branches, bark, pine cones, and irregular tree parts that are 'waste' lignin or cellulose. And using these discarded resources, dry them and turn them into fuel.
Whether in a compost pile, slash pile or burned in fuel, these are all oxidized and burned returning to elemental states. Fuel burning is part of the natural cycle of carbon that we have surpressed with forrest fire fighting which has been a disaster as seen in Yellowstone and Storm King.
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Part 2
Wood contains a small percentage of mineral components that are the residue called ash - typically about 1 to 2% but about 70% of this is in elements such as calcium, potassium and magnesium. With the removal of woody biomass from forests, the process would additionally remove all these mineral components from the land (which would reduce the availability of these essential components for the next generation's growth of trees). Instead of being recycled naturally within the ecological niche, this wood ash would become a very hazardous industrial waste (exceedingly alkaline).
The real fuel value of wood must consider numerous reductions including the energy required for transporting workers and equipment to the site, the energy required for harvesting the wood, the energy requirments for getting the wood to the combustion plant; and for removing/evaporating the water in the wood (its moisture content). When all these processing energy requirements are factored into and compared to the amount of real energy gained, the amount of real gain is small -- a gain that could be better realized with more efficient utilization of energy without any emissions whatsoever.
It is also essential to realize that by establishing a precident of converting wood to fuel, it raises the very important question of who it will be determining which wood species is valuable and which are not (those species that are "substandard weeds"). A wood species that is not valuable now could be extremely important as a resource for other products in the future, or is a wood species that is of critical importance for wildlife species as a food source (seeds and fruits) or as part of the larger interrelational health of the forests. There is a significant difference between industrial forestry ( tree plantations ) and natural, complex, multiple species forests.
Wood as product or wood as humus in soil sequesters carbon, potentially for extended periods of time, while burning wood releases all the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Forget the notion of biogenic carbon dioxide; just because you change its name does not reduce the problems associated with it vis a vis global climate change. It is the argument of a sophist.
Additionally beyond CO2 emissions, when wood burns it releases water, acids (as with acetic acid) and soot. Are we to return to the days of acid rains? Further, soot is a huge absorber of solar energy in terms of atmospheric warming. Wood may seem to be clean and natural but that is not entirely correct as it too emits problematic substances.
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Part 3
What no one is willing to articulate is that the best way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (from whatever the fuel source) means using less energy. The Fallacy of Corporate Conservation applies in this regard. The prime directive of all corporations is to maximize short term profitability. For a corporation to advocate reducing consumption of their product (eg electricity) by advocating reducing the amount of energy consumers utilize is corporate heresy, and is something that will never occur. No corporation will ever tell its customers that they need to use 1/3 less of their product even if the very survival of the world is at stake because it would jeopardize the company's profits. As such, rather that continuing to support energy corporations by providing them with additional fuel resources, the humans of this Earth must begin to deprive these corporations of the readily available fuel materials. Then and only then will they begin the essential R&D into solar energy conversion processes and technologies.
Stanley Niemiec
503 749 4237
Wood Technologist (M. S. Penn State '79) and
Former Senior Research Assistant at Oregon State University Forest Products Department (College of Forestry) 1987 - 1994.
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Thanks for stating the obvious! It's a relief to see that the discussion on-line is SO much more intellegent than what goes out over the air.
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The "maximum short term profitability" problem can and ought to be addressed through revision of the capital gains and other tax laws. In the past, "long term" gains and profits were emphasized through tax and economic policies.
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Sooner or later we must start again to build nuclear power plants. This is the future whether we like it or not. The idea that we will somehow overcome the looming energy deficit by burning forest litter or devote potential food growing land to raising a fuel crop is naive.
Of course there is risk involved in nuke power plants. But Western Europe has been building and operating safe and efficient nuclear power plants for several decades and have done so safely. There are no possible sustainable, efficient solutions to the energy dilemma unless nuclear power is factored into the plans.
The idea we can grow enough weeds and bush and efficiently convert them to significant amounts of power with no environmental penalty is unrealistic thinking.
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Truer words have never been spoken. But until we don't have so many people responding to the nuclear issue based upon emotion, and not reality, I am not optimistic that anything is going to change.
And what the so called "friends of the earth" will not own up to is the fact that this complete avoidance of new nuclear power sources is directly causing the continued discharge of tons and tons of radioactive uranium and thorium, not to even mention the CO2, because of the necessity of relying on these old school coal plants.
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The problem of Nuclear Power is storage of spent fuels which may be dangerous for a 1000 years, after only a few decades of service. Even recycled reprocessed fuel will generate gamma isotopes that will outlive the United States of America and affect the planet for millenia.
Uranium-235 has a half life of 700 million years. U-238 will last a BILLION years easily. I doubt this country will last another 200 years with all our strife and conflict. Safety for 50 years is easy, the safety plan for the next 500 years is a challenge.
We tend to see problems with short horizons or "in My Lifetime" at max, never really considering generational problems.
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I am strongly opposed to PGE’s proposal to plant giant reed (Arundo donax) for biomass production at the Boardman power facility. This plant has already invaded tens of thousands of acres along rivers in California and other states, where it becomes solid stand, displacing native plants and the wildlife that depends on them. Arundo donax also removes large amounts of in-stream and groundwater that could be used for irrigation and drinking water. The February 2011, Oregon Department of Agriculture, Plant Pest Risk Assessment for Giant Reed Arundo donax L. states: “Compared to native plants, it consumes three times as much water. In the Santa Ana River alone, Arundo consumes an estimated 56,200 acre-feet of water annually with an estimated value of $18 million (Orange County Water District 2003).”
Proponents of this project are saying that since Arundo donax rarely produces seed, there is little risk of it spreading. This is a fallacy because the plant easily reproduces from root pieces. It forms a dense mat of creeping roots that can be broken off by floodwater and transported down river or be transported with soil on agricultural equipment. It is not a question of whether this invasive species will spread in Oregon, but only of how long it will take. The eventual loss of our Columbia River riparian area to an invasion of Arundo donax is not a sensible trade for energy production.
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To Soggy and Jacob,
In Nevada we already have the national nuke waste storage facility. It was built at great expense and possesses a design as good or better than any similar storage anywhere. But it has been effectively closed by one man, Sen. Harry Reid.
If one looks at the population densities of the lower 48 it is immediately obvious that no other state has so great an expanse of uninhabited land as Nevada. I lived in Boulder City for a number of years and know, at least from the road, that region where the depository is located. It's empty! Yet a few thousand people living within a hundred or more miles of the Yucca Flats site and their champion, Harry Reid, have stone walled the project.
Who can doubt that Reid is the recipent of much 'consideration' from the oil and gas power industries, to keep the facility closed and the nuclear energy program thus stalled? Until he dies or retires he will continue being a fixture in DC and a impenetrable barrier to a sensible nuclear energy program.
As for the dangers; envitrification (if that is the word) of radioactive waste materials has solved some of those concerns. The waste material is encased in glass containers and these placed inside steel barrels. Glass is the only abundant material found so far that does not corrode in contact with radio active materials. Placed in containers and stored in the NV depository, the dangers from the emmission of radiation is minimized. It is not zero, but the risk will have to be taken if we don't want the lights going out.
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G : X
gerang has an axe to grind,
'it's harry reid's fault'
and some gratutious info gleaned from the readers digest version of SciAmericana
he doesn't understand what it means, but is willing to repeat it
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By the way, if you desire full employment for your friends and kids; all you need to do is buy Organic Groceries and encourage your government to enforce workplace safety, wage and hour rules for all workers; including the rule that demands workers show documentation that they have a right to work.
Organic farming is very dependent on the hand and the mind. It requires weeding and fertilizing techniques that are a hands-on operation.
That a person would pay the guy installing a sink $45/hour and pay the guy growing food for his 2-year-old $9.50 an hour is just more proof of the upside-down way that businessmen and lawyers have manipulated Americans.
It is not natural for a 12 year old girl to have b-cup breasts because she has been eating chickens full of growth hormone her whole life; and it is not natural for your son to still have strep throat 3 weeks after he starts taking tetracycline because all of the beef he ever ate was loaded with it and the strep has adapted.
Proper organic farming takes compost and it takes a lot of woody debris to make good compost. Dont sell off our future good health so we can charge gaming devices and cell phones and plasma televisions.
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Some basic questions for those of us who are not up to speed on "bio-mass" projects:
Is this just the relatively clean burning of wood and other ag products in state-of-the-art fluid reactors to produce heat to spin turbines?
Burning plants seems so retro as a power source. Why not just "turn up" the dams and use some of the dormant turbines in the BPA system? Pay the system to produce the power it was designed to do. Now that the aluminum plants are gone there is a huge surplus of capacity on the Columbia system.
What is the relative carbon production from biomass vs just using less of an equivalent amount of electricity?
Why does a state legislature have to debate this? the least efficient design of a power system comes from legislation.
Is there a unified standard that can be adopted without all the fuss in Salem? There are other states and countries working with this concept. Somebody must be doing it right.
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The conversion of heat to power is nothing new, but it has been refined to allow for much greater efficiencies.
Where there have been technical advances is in the processes for cleaning the discharge stream. What PGE had "floated" in regards to the pollution controls proposed for the Boardman coal plant was based upon legacy technology first introduced in the 70s and 80s. The new technology available, and this is where Oregon is completely missing the boat in regards to developing real green jobs, allows for closer to a zero emission environment where you deliberately design for the emission levels that you want to achieve.
And if the issue really is producing less carbon, nuclear is the obvious solution.
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Ask the water question.
I've heard that this cane crop would require 100,000 irrigated acres using 3 acre feet of water per acre to supplant coal at Boardman.
300,000 acre feet of water in the Boardman area, assuming this invasive species "crop" would be grown locally? Really?
That water is not simply not available unless 1. the cane crop replaces existing food crops (which won't happen) or 2. Biomass promoters overturn programs designed to protect migrating salmon in the Columbia River (leagally, politically and culturally unacceptable) or 3. some massive water storage project is constructed that uses winter water from the Columbia when salmon are not migrating. (Fiscally irresponsible) Promoters will no doubt want the public to pay for some or all of this storage project.
Putting aside all of the other concerns about this proposal, this project is not feasible or environmentally sustainable from a water perpective. Like many other "green" energy proposals, this one also fails to consider the water footprint of the process when claiming sustainability etc.
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Biomass is burning a hydrocarbon the same as coal or gas. It does not matter what you are burning it will always end in the creation of CO2. The plants grown for Biomass use light from the sun! Cut out the "middle man" of the plant product and use solar energy!
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I live and work in central Oregon. I have heard about a plan to use invasive juniper trees to create a biomass product that could be burned in the Boardman plant. Is this still an option?
Moreover, some things to think about with this issue.
Although it may not germinate from seed, it can still spread from rhiozomes. Look at kudzu in the southeast if you want to look at the possibilities of a non-native invasive weed and the damage that can happen from uncontrolled growth.
What about the effects of growing giant cane on the local alfafa and ranching economies? Won't local ranchers now have to pay more for alfafa hay to feed in the winter? Reducing the available acreage by 60,000 acres will be great for alfafa growers, but may not be great for ranchers or dairy farmers.
Could juniper and giant cane be used together? Invasive juniper grows over 6 million acres in central and eastern Oregon, with negative effects for landowners and watersheds. Cutting juniper and shipping to Boardman by rail would be good for local economies, rangelands, watersheds, and landowners. Obviously, it has issues as well related to transportation, extracting juniper over a larger area, and creating a useable product from the juniper.
I believe all these issues should be discussed or addressed as the state and PGE moves forward with possibility of changing the Boardman plant to a biomass facility.
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Displacing the growing of Alfalfa for animal feed will end up raising the price of beef and other food animals that feed on Alfalfa hay. In effective, burning food for energy.
So essentially this is the same thing as burning corn in the form of alcohol, to drive cars.
Burning food for energy is one of the stupidest ideas ever!
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Right this yr we see the evidence of climate change in the rising food prices. It has been a terrible yr for food crops in most parts of the world. There is no reason to believe this is an anomaly and every reason to think it is the start of a recurrent problem.
Oregon is blessed with abundant water west of the Cascades. Every possible effort should be made to incerease acreage under food crops and take advantage of this economic asset. Converting potential food crop land and water to raising fuel plants is not a good investment strategy for the coming years.
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The Boardman acreage requires incredible amounts of water and fertilizer. Few seem to understand that it is a giant hydroponics project. Long ago the poplar grown there was supposed to be a good wood for paper production - ignoring all of the research in the Southern US that it is not a species companies really want. Boardman has soaked up tons of money on one "plan" after another to make it profitable. This whole biofuels issue does nothing but create high salaries for entrepreneurs.
What biofuels research should concentrate on are small plants in major cities to convert restaurant waste like vegetable oil to fuel.
The research also shows that to take increasing levels of biomass from forestry operations hurts the long term productivity of forest soils. Basically site index goes down as the land is stressed by decreasing levels of organic matter. We should be leaving as much OM on clear cut sites as possible. The slash should be left on the land. Even if burned on site, the ash acts as a fertilizer. This is common knowledge.
These biofuels "experts" are basically wasting our tax money.
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"The research also shows that to take increasing levels of biomass from forestry operations hurts the long term productivity of forest soils."
Very important point.
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Biomass may not be as sustainable as it's billed.
As organic farmers we focus on building nutrients in the soil so our crops continue to thrive. Plants grow out of the soil; each plant takes and holds some of the minerals present in that soil. When harvesting biomass, over time you will strip the soil of its mineral and nutrient bank, leaving behind weak soil. Weak soil will not continue to produce big crops.
This is a problem throughout agriculture, not paying attention to building soil that sustains life. It's short sighted to look at what we can use today without thinking of what the payback is in the long term. Even using slash from forest cutting is short sighted. Leaving it in place to rot back into the soil is how soil renews itself.
I'm NOT in favor of coal in the slightest, but stripping the soil of its life force and expecting it to keep on producing doesn't seem like a bright idea either.
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When most people think of burning biomass, they think of hog fuel or traditional wood pellets and perhaps not the cleanest of emissions. The reality is, like many other clean energy technologies, biomass energy, too, is improving with time. It makes economical sense to use forest waste and agricultural waste to produce energy. Anyone with any kind of business sense would see that chopping down perfectly healthy trees to use as a source of biomass energy would be entirely too expensive, not to mention a complete lack of regard for the environment. In the case of woody biomass energy, feedstock could be forest waste – the slash piles that remain after forest restoration or logging operations. These slash piles are now usually burned in place, emitting toxins into the air, or left to rot, producing methane, a wonderful source of greenhouse gas. Additionally, biomass energy could come from agricultural residue or dedicated energy (not food source) crops.
Our company, HM3 Energy, has developed a second generation technology for utilizing biomass using a process called “torrefaction.” Torrefaction uses the lowest value biomass from the forest– even the bark and twigs -- to produce solid biofuel that can be burned in place of coal. Now there are a number of companies throughout the world working to commercialize it to transform biomass into something that can replace coal. Torrefied biomass, unlike traditional wood pellets, can be shipped in open rail cars and stored outside. It is brittle and can be pulverized and co-fired with coal, and eventually probably replace coal entirely. It burns much cleaner than traditional wood pellets and it has a higher btu than coal does, pound for pound.
When the life cycle of biomass based fuel is taken into account, the fuel is carbon neutral. It seems a shame to burn slash piles or leave them to rot instead of using them for energy. Instead, this forest waste could be used to gradually replace coal, resulting in an immediate reduction of CO2 as well as the toxic emissions of coal, such as mercury and nitrous oxides. Coal fired power plants can be repurposed to burn biomass without modifications to the plant. No new transmission lines need to be put in place to connect the energy to the power grid.
There is plenty of biomass in Oregon. According to an Oregon Dept of Energy study, there are between 3.5 to 6.6 million dry tons of biomass which can be economically and sustainably collected per year. There are 1 to 1.5 million bone dry tones per year of agricultural residue. There are up to one half million bone dry tons of urban wood waste. About 20 small torrefaction plants placed in rural areas in Oregon where there is sufficient biomass within a 40-mile radius and rail available would supply enough fuel to replace all the coal at Boardman. And in the meantime, supply greatly needed jobs for many rural Oregonians.
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Bone dry huh? Bone dry is hardly the way to describe what is in my green recycling bin. Pond dry would be a far better description. How is it going to get bone dry?
The city of Portland is having a hard time coming up with a place to make compost with all of its debris and that is a wet process. Coming up with a place to get it all dry enough to burn is something altogether different. It is a scam.
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As someone who has done a lot of burning of combustibles and also separated the char from different wood mixs to burn the two separately, I can attest to how difficult a challenge it is to burn the non charcoal part of the mix cleanly, without a lot of serious energy input, i.e., fans, afterburners etc.. The charcoal part is always the easiest to burn.
So, what is your 'cooking', 'afterburning', and 'compressing' energy input to get your 'managable' end fuel? And how did you manage to burn cleanly the stuff you removed?
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Extracting bio-mass from the forests where it has historically replenished the soils by either rotting in place or burning in place is another potentially very bad idea. How much of those mineral nutrients will be extracted?
Trees, other plants, and wildlife need to have that material left in place.
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Oregon is the Saudi Arabia of Wood Fuel.
And unlike Oil, Wood fuel is replenished at rates of Millions of Tons a Year.
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... and the corporations will 'extract' that fuel until the soil is turned to dust and blows away, then they will blame the landowner and walk away -
an opinion of mine, realizing the limitations of opinion, biomass is an idea for a much less populated world -
- biomass will raise the price of energy and the price of both vegetable and animal based foods- who wins? the producers? not even - the middleman suppliers win, as in 'buy low, sell high' -
it is the corporations who are not forward looking, who stymy new research and development, even while on paper they can make it look like they are leaking money in R&D -
as far as nuclear - it is the corporations which bungled it in this country - cut-corner construction and operation/maintenance
- the p.r. whine about storing waste for millions of years is bunk -
the materials are re-processable - it is not like wood which totally changes form and make-up - it is radioactive element(s) which one should read up on and learn exactly what happens to these elements - we store it because we believed the corporate lies that it was impossible to re-process - and so they make millions of $$$ digging a hole in the ground instead of investing in reprocessing - corporations have a tendency and history of hiding the truth so they can make more money -
often this is referred to as dishonesty, if not something worse =
why do we allow them to do it -?
well - one reason is not enough people are educated enough to punch holes in their arguments - and how did they/we get that way?
Well, have a look - which republicans support wholeheartedly a robust and competent public school system?
name one and you'll do well
biomass fuel is an interesting sci fi idea for another world less populated than ours - corporations want it?
does that mean they have plans for reducing the population of earth? except, of course for their own
sounds like sci fi, don't it?
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In the natural life of forrests-- if man were not present--would be forrests build up and cycles of devastating forrest fires from lightning every summer. The Circle of Life. Ask Bambi.
The land gets burned to the ground, millions of tons of carbon and heat are released. And the barren ground begins again.
Why not harness this natural burn cycle for human benefit?
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not unreasonable points, but:
we are putting so much MORE carbon back into the atmosphere than just what forrest fires would -
and incineration produces even more sorts of toxic fumes and ash - and how much can we trust a money-hungry corporation to do a good job, rather than what they can get away with -
yes, i am adamant about their irresponsibility, i admit it - show me what, on a massive scale, they are doing to remedy that shortfall - other than p.r. lies
and:
think of what this biomass farming is going to do to the food supplies - it is already happening
Can we really expect others to go hungry so we can gas up some fuel inefficient tank?
extracted hydrocarbons have so much more use than burning , and with that the material is never ever usable again - at least plastics are recyclable -
40 mpg is not progress - my '90 sport 2-seater gets mid 30's mpg on frwy - and does not burn oil and is not american made
biomass might not be an unreasonable short-term and narrow-range alternative, but in longer run, unless it does not compete in land and resources for food, i doubt its viability - there are so many of us in the world - do some really deserve to starve so someone else can drive a guzzling monster and be 6 feet off the ground in plush corinthian leather seats at 10 mpg?
let the present sort of corporations we have in on whatever, and they will muck it up in every way possible, so long as they can get their money and run - possibly the first thing we need, in any problem we tackle, is corporate responsibility -
as an aside- you might enjoy this novel from a few years ago -
'Fitzpatrick's War' Theodor Judson
it neither proves nor disproves anything, but is an interesting read, if sci fi is to your taste
biomass is an underlying 'character'
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burning of slash is a waste of valuable resource -- we burn slash because no infrastucture exists to utilize and process it.
Who determines the value of the resource ? Without an infrastructure to process it, it has no value. Why not invest in creating these infrastructure>
While at OSU, individuals were telling me of 4 foot diameter chinkapin logs being hogged for fuel.
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I am glad we have women with common sense speaking well on this matter. Burning fuels cause problems.....period. The west coast of the Unites States has huge energy reserves in desert regions for California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington for Sun producing solar energy, water (river and ocean) energy and wind energy. These are the energy sources we should be spending money on. Leave the forest alone!
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David's credentials at the state are well known. Now as a private attorney, he represents companies in the industry. I did not hear in his intro how he might be conflicted in this discussion.
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What is clear is that not all biomass is created equal when it comes carbon neutrality. Cutting whole trees and forests for biomass is neither feasibly nor sustainable. Your guest from the Biomass Accountability Project is taking an extreme example as a reason to halt all efforts to move forward. Also, there are new densification technologies in development like torrefaction that will dramatically reduce the emissions profile of biomass burning.
The other major source of biomass is from agricultural biomass for which the carbon neutrality is not an issue. The USDA's famous billion ton study identified ag biomass as the main source for biomass to fuels.
Harrison
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I'm so sick an tired of hearing coal and oil industry shills on your show. Don't you take any time to vet where your supposed "experts" come from? I'm ready to give up on this show, you are litterally babes in the woods and you are thowing Oregon to the wolves with this totally irresponsable "news casting". Get a clue or get back to classical music.
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I'm curious about the labor cost and shipping associated with collecting the "woody waste."
It seems like the costs to collect and truck the biomass to the power plant, considering how much is necessary, would be prohibitive. How much gas would be burned just getting the material to the facility, when you need a ton per minute?
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Removing the biomass from the forest is removing the nutrients that form the forrest over thousands of years.
The biomass needs to remain in the forrest to provide the nutriants for future trees. This is a long term rot cycle that we should not interrupt.
Forest biomass is a false argument. It needs to stay in the forrest.
Domestic biomass should be composted.
Burning is not an environmental appriopiate method of getting rid of organic material. It is just another resource exploitation like Oil. It is justy another form of making energy.
We should be using and emphasising Solar, not Biomass.
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The last caller stated that whole trees will not be utilized for biomass. In 2005, Warm Springs Forest Products Industries proposed a 30MW biomass plant that would depend on whole trees logged from Mt. Hood, Deschutes, and Ochoco National Forest. Bark raised concerns and the project has been tabled since.
Mr. Vant Hoff stated that there is no evidence that Oregon's timber industry would overreach beyond a sustainable harvest for biomass. Drive to the coast and you can see the timber industry has overreached for decades.
Burning our way out of climate change is the wrong solution.
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Sheesh!
Why don't we just go back to burning whales to light our homes?
It makes as much sense as this new version of human folly.
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Thanks for asking the question about water, but the question, while valid for most biomass/green energy type projects (ethanol anyone?) was really designed here for the Boardman discussion.
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Based on listening to “Meg Sheehan” today (with all due respect to her person) is about as competent to be an authority or expert on Oregon’s Biomass potential opportunities as is a Chickadee to comment on Shakespeare!
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“Meg Sheehan” today (with all due respect to her person) should stay in Wisconson and deal with it OR study the Oregon environment, timber and logging, its obivious she has never seen a slash pile, doesn't understand how forest fires polute and cause damage.... we really do need to figure out how to use all this stuff that has been waisted for years....
John Asbury
Sweet Home Oregon
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We may be able, as you hope, to figure out a way to use slash in a way that is a win:win. Lots of us who live out in the woods lay awake nights thinking about it. The first requirement is to keep the ash in place or return it after combustion.
Nothing is wasted in nature....., but hot forest fires on steep ground followed by heavy rains can be devastating as far as nutrient loss and future productivity on specific sites. Slash and slash burning or even forest fires do not generally have long term negative impacts, especially if the current level of nutrients [won from the parent silicates over countless generations of plant growth and soil organism activity) is not diminished by some kind of extraction or removal from the site or root zones. It really is like a bank account. Some sites can tolerate more withdrawals from that account than others. Cropping low lands, where nutrients tend to accumulate from highlands, has proved the principle. Even soil with a huge reserve, have a limit when you annually remove nutrients. We are now at the point on some formerly fertile low lands where we supply virtually all the extracted nutrients on an annual basis, in proportion to the ratios that are used by the species that we intend to grow. Hydroponics grew in conjunction with our need to keep growing crops on land increasingly drained of their nutrient bank account -
So why not just fertilize our forests? The short answer is, we don't get annual feedback as we do with annual food crop producing land that we can manipulate and amend with equipment. By the time we have figured out we have a problem with most forest land, the managers haven't a clue as to whether the problem has anything to do with cropping 40+ years ago or not. Fertility management in forests, if it ever becomes more than an oxymoron, will require much more research. It will likely always be limited in mountainous timberland where soil sites are variable and not easily mapped or amended.
In the mean time the best we can hope to do is leave as many nutrients as close to where they came from as possible. This was what was behind the thinking of the forest service in the '70s when they at one point even advocated a practice of spreading the limbs around after a logging operation. This in contrast to a recent Helicopter operation in my 'backyard' where they accumulated the tops and limbs of more than 1000 acres of thinned timber on a 1 acre landing site. The heat of the slash fire in some places melted rock, soil, and ash. Mostly though, it just relocated a lot of nutrients.
Will this slash burn site be more productive than the land that was logged? That depends on whether the bank account of the different sites where the trees came from were drawn down to the point where there was a "limiting nutrient". Odds are the landing site will have quite a reserve of the non-volatile and soluble nutrients, but since those can also be limiting, the forester that looks at this site 50 years from now, likely wont have a clue as to what happened, and probably wont even see an outward difference. The difference in this case is that the slash burn sight could probably remain productive - even with cropping - for many, many generations with just the additions of occasional Potassium (soluble), Sulphur (volatile), Nitrogen (volatile), and maybe Phosphorus, (reactionary with Iron and aluminum). All the other 10 or so mineral nutrients would be there in abundance. -
I don't understand how anyone can say CO2 from biomass isn't biogenic, but that's really beside the point. What matters is whether it's non-accumulative/carbon neutral. If it's from trees that are to be replanted, the answer is probably yes, since the emissions can be balanced (even if the rate of uptake is slower/varies regionally/isn't as good for near-term reductions). It may add to the short-term CO2 loading of the atmosphere, but if it's fire-control biomass or slash, then it will burn anyway. And as the US News article suggests, fossil fuel is at this point the likely alternative in most cases. If we were deploying solar baseload etc. fast enough to keep up with demand, we probably wouldn't need biomass. I can understand concerns about it becoming a slippery slope leading to increased forest activity unrelated to fire control, but perhaps policy can address that.
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We may be able, as you hope, to figure out a way to use slash in a way that is a win:win. Lots of us who live out in the woods lay awake nights thinking about it. The first requirement is to keep the ash in place or return it after combustion.
Nothing is wasted in nature....., but hot forest fires on steep ground followed by heavy rains can be devastating as far as nutrient loss and future productivity on specific sites. Slash and slash burning or even forest fires do not generally have long term negative impacts, especially if the current level of nutrients [won from the parent silicates over countless generations of plant growth and soil organism activity) is not diminished by some kind of extraction or removal from the site or root zones. It really is like a bank account. Some sites can tolerate more withdrawals from that account than others. Cropping low lands, where nutrients tend to accumulate from highlands, has proved the principle. Even soil with a huge reserve, have a limit when you annually remove nutrients. We are now at the point on some formerly fertile lands where we supply virtually all the extracted nutrients on an annual basis, in proportion to the ratios that are used by the species that we intend to grow. Hydroponics grew in conjunction with our need to keep growing crops on land increasingly drained of their nutrient bank account. -
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Sorry about these double posts....
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{TIC} As an alternative I'd propose the Bioa$$ initiative... if you're out of work, down on your luck or homeless, you can earn meals and a place to sleep by pedaling a bike (hooked to a generator) for a 6hr shift... 1000people producing a modest 100W average each yields 100KW per hour... keep multiplying to the total number of jobless/homeless (and assuming 4-shifts a day) and it might become meaningful while simultaneously improving the overall health of the population.
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I think I can sustain about 40 watts for about 15 minutes. lol
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Nice idea, but unfortunately, humans are not that efficient. Any gains based upon excercise are going to be more than exhausted by the higher nutritional intake requirements you are going to create.
Now if you could somehow do this using only really fat people and control their caloric intake so that they are actually converting their stored "weight", you might have a chance!
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in a more altruistic world, this is remarkable and a workable idea - that it will not even be considered here and now is indicative of much of what ails us - in this world, it would be thought as a slavery of sorts - meanwhile wage-slavery is what is to be aspired to and drummed into the young - isn't it better we pay off the kings of Arabia than read their fables and consider the various ways of being human
go figure
i particularly like the idea of using the obese - all would benefit from their efforts-
gearing would take care of effort, caloric intake would not sky-rocket
it would be like walking inside a very big wheel, and it's been done before as replacement for water power e.g. water-wheel in a mill
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With free range slash and under burning taking place every year, why not a biomass plant in those areas that can sustain it. Control what is released into the air at a biomass plant vs no control in the managed burning that takes place now. Working in the forest, doing many different studies, one including down woody debris and fuel loading plots, I have thought for several years this could be just what my county needs.
Renewable? Walk a scant 30,000 acre area, go back in another year after wind, heavy snows and disease, you will find a very renewable resource. Juniper, another resource. The juniper could involve many private land owners that may reap a benefit by selling to the biomass plants. More dollars in their pockets also enriches our local economy.
Worry about total loss of down woody debris? The sky is not falling and that is an extreme if you think about it. There is a protocol for everything we do in the forest why would one think it would be different for a biomass plant that is harvesting in the forests? On private land, contrary to public belief most ranchers and land owners are very picky about what is harvested from their lands and how it is done, some not so much. Lets not let the few rule the responsible.
Harney District Hospitals water and heat is provided by pellets from by products, saw dust pellets. The DEQ was so impressed with the lack of emissions it put them low on the watch dog list. The particulate matter that comes out of this system is almost not existent due to the fact it is burnt at such high temperatures. The emissions that are released go right back to the forest to feed the trees from whence it came. A cyclical system, is that not what we are looking for? The system at our hospital is a poster child for what can be done with wood waste.
In Harney County we are one of the poorest counties in Oregon. We have a huge knowledgeable and skill based work force that made their living in the forests. It would be beautiful to see these families at work again and some back together as one parent usually works out of the area. The benefit for my county would be huge, sustainable jobs and with a renewable resource.
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The probem with the future of biomass and your argument for it is that you are trying to compare apples to oranges. Your hospitals are, as you say, using a bypproduct of another process that is already concentrating a resource in one place, getting some product out of it, and creating a waste material. This is a natural outcome of resource management on a small scale and is a good thing.
Using biomass on a larger scale and actively going into the forest to harvest biomass after logging, or growing a fuel that you intend to burn; is something altogether different. The amount of fuel needed is vastly larger for a city than it is for a hospital.
A similar thing has happened in the recent past with burning spent fryer grease in diesel vehicles. The oil is a waste product; yes. You can refine it and burn it in diesel vehicles; yes. There is plenty to go around; No. Not even close.
The only reason they have ever burned slash in the forest is because it lets them plant a few more trees. I would say that the slash piles I have personally hunted around in Oregon forests compromise an area that ten to twenty trees could grow on per spar pole landing slash pile. Because the trees could have a future value of a few thousand dollars it has made sense in the past to burn the slash and plant the trees. You pay a couple guys to drive a water truck to the scene and torch the pile and pay them $400 and you have a place to plant $7000 worth of trees. It is simple math.
As far as forest protocol goes. We cannot trust men to make sound decisions without being forced to by a court of law. It is unfortunate but true. And one thing that you can count on is that men seldom learn by mistakes of others and looking at history.
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Yes, I see what you are saying about our hospital, we only have one here, but it is set up to burn any pelletized fuel. I agree that it is small scale compared to a city, but we live in a small town. My point was the hospital shows what can happen on a larger scale.
I understand that harvesting biomass means actively going into the forest. We actively go into the forest for logging and thinning. I disagree with your assumption of the quantity of the biomass fuel available in the forest I work in. It has the down woody debris as a resource in a volume that could be used in a biomass plant along with all the juniper that is cut and just left to be burnt. Even though the juniper is not renewable it is a resource to augment the renewable resource.
I don't see all the seedling being planted in the slash pile areas you are talking of. Most of the trees on our forest are planted in areas where forest fires have occurred. As far as the few guys and a pumper truck are concerned that is not how we take care of much of the slash here. I guess you could call a thinning project with slash piles a couple of guys, we actively thin using contractors and they are responsible for the slash piles they generate and have to use forest protocols. Some slash piles are used to school our fire crews in the spring. Some slash pile left after a sale and not required to be removed are used for public use firewood, sometime free use. So on our forest this is Not the only reason slash piles are burnt. I guess even it was the only reason those slash piles were burnt it does not discount the fact that the slash could be used by a biomass plant instead of being burnt, burnt without all the emissions being released.
I don't know about your forest protocols and contracts but ours are monitored, sometimes daily. I have watched our forest work hand in hand with those groups that pursue lawsuits. All you need to do is drive a few miles into this Eastern Oregon forest and you will see slash. Under story burning, we do our fair share of that, also involves fuels that could be used in a biomass plant.
We are all forced by a court of law to do a sundry of things daily, wear your seat belt, pay your taxes, etc. We have to leave room for trust, or if we don't, get involved. Keep your enemies close might be a good adage, if you feel they are.
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I oppose biomass energy production. We need to sharply reduce energy waste instead. If we are going to seriously challenge all of our environmental problems, we're going to have to change the way we live. Most of the things that we perceive to be necessities are not. We have had the misfortune of living in the most ridiculously wasteful century in all of human history, and we consider this lifestyle to be normal, sane, and desirable. It is not.
The cities of Oregon are highly visible at night from satellites in outer space. I can almost walk from one end of Eugene to the other while reading a book at midnight. Car dealerships and shopping centers are ridiculously well lit, all night long, with wasted energy. They could hire a security guard, turn off the lights, and increase their profits.
I once read an article on Guernsey, an island in the English Channel. The author was impressed by the astonishing common sense of this land, which resulted in a prosperous life with an extremely light footprint. For example: "And at night much of Guernsey is a dark place indeed because many of the parishes have long since decided that street lighting is a waste of money. So there isn't any. Guernseymen argue that if you go out at night and want to see, you carry a flashlight. Which is of course a very practical and exceedingly cheap solution."
Clothes lines and drying racks can get clothes just as dry as electric clothes driers. Small screen TVs provide us with no less mindless garbage than large screen TVs. For thousands of years, people have enjoyed rich and satisfying lives without air conditioners. And so on.
We are already using biomass fuel to power vehicles — ethanol. Highly subsidized ethanol is reducing grain exports, and resulting in food riots in poor countries. The idea of wood-fueled vehicles gives me nightmares, and our society is insane enough to give them serious consideration. During World War II, most of Japan's oil imports were cut off. At this point the Japanese began converting their forests to "pine root" (turpentine) for use as a fuel in airplanes, trucks, and industry. Naturally, this resulted in substantial deforestation. In wartime Europe, hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, and buses were powered by gasifying wood chips or charcoal.
Biomass energy corporations have two primary objectives: growth and profits, by any means that they can get away with. As long as it remains legal and profitable, they will not hesitate to turn Oregon into a treeless Easter Island. We know this. It's the American way. The future is irrelevant. Waste reduction that does not increase profits is treasonous, unpatriotic, and an offense against God. Let's do it anyway!
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The sun shines down plenty of power to provide for all of our human needs, every day, so that source is what we ought to persue and develop.
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Solar and wind are good for maybe 20% tops, what do you suggest for the other 80%?
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The coast range and the west side of the Cascades really need to have the "slash" and other bio-mass left in place to replenish the soils and help hold it in place, because the rains dissolve and wash away the soil nutrients if the soil is left bare. If I recall correctly there is only a relative thin layer of upper top soil that supports plant growth and if that washes away you are left with essentially sterile bare ground.
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Curious question (acknowledge that I might have missed something)... we live in a volcanic region, why no discussion of geothermal energy?
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Why hasn't anyone mntioned geo thermo heat as another source of power generation? In Klamath Falls and in many other regions there is an abundant, clean enegy source that has not been fully utilized. Currently there is not much being done in R&D to harness this source of a renewable energy asset.
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And if you think we have problems with electricity now just wait for the quickly coming day when everybody is going to get on the fashionable bandwagon of plug-in hybrid cars.
They are advertised as "zero emission" vehicles by clever advertisers. Zero emissions... Riiiiight. Another mystical hoodwink, by advertisers, paid by for-profit car companies. Where do folks think they are going to get the power to go?
Where is the number to call in government to say the advertising is just plain an outright lie?
We are electing the "d" students that somehow got off the farm where the rest of the "d" students remain.
Election after election we elect the same kind of knotheads because their campaigns are financed by rich people that have chosen them as easiest to manage and manipulate.
One more thing I heard recently in the film 180 degrees south.
"Gaming devices" across the United States use as much energy as the City of SanDiego. I would love to see the math but I am guessing it is true.
We had technology in the 1982 Nissan Sentra that got 62 miles per gallon. Honda came out shortly after with the Civic VX that was the highest mileage, mass produced vehicle that was ever sold in this country. There are no non-hybrid cars available on the market today that come anywhere near the mileage of these two vehicles unless you go to the high end and very expensive Volkswagon diesels.
People buy what advertisers serve them. People are sheep.
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Exactly, this is another scheme to keep us Addicted to the "grid" of unfortunately mostly dirty, toxic, lethal fuels. GM is more than aware of this, because they designed the "fastest Solar Car" ever in 1987.
It is very possible to design a "closed system" by recharging the battery with solar directly off the hood of the vehicle.
"Big Business" really does not want us to be "self-reliant" because it "kills" this devouring model of "CAPITALISM".
Loretta
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USE LESS ENERGY; USE LOTS LESS ENERGY. HOW MUCH MORE BASIC DO YOU NEED TO BE.
It was Pogo who said: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
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"geothermal"
Companies have spent many millions of dollars on research and development of it and it has apparently not worked out.
A company spent decades and millions drilling and testing on and around Paulina Peak, which has active thermal venting, near Bend, without success.
Some places use it successfully, like Lakeview, and I don't know the reasons for failure in other places.
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When I was in school in KFalls starting way back in the late 40s they were already using geo-thermo to heat public buildings and provide heated water to the high school swimming pool. The concrete seating on one side of the football field had hot water pipes embedded in the concrete. I know there is a small R&D program at OIT researching this source, and one other company formed to look into it, but not much yet to show for its work. Not sure where the problems lie.
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With my tax dollars, I definitely do not support burning wood, "garbage", and another invasive species such as "Arundo Donax" or "giant cane" into an incinerator as a source of "electricity". There are so many other demands for wood waste, such as chip board, landscaping mulch, natural release of nutrients, pulp, etc.
Biomass burning is an extremely insatiable model which requires enormous mass to keep this Beast fed. The dependency on Massive amounts of materials at the rate that reproducing humans consume is not sustainable. Once we invest $Billions, it will be another trap as it is with fossil fuels and "forest farming".
Also, we need to Allow Our Forests to Heal for this is an extremely complex Ecosystem that is Our Greatest Carbon Sink and source of Oxygen. We could never afford to replace what we've already been given on this most unique planet.
The highest priorities for energy demands are:
1) reduce consumption,
2) increase energy efficiency usage.
3) invest and develop more Clean, Safe, Abundant energy systems such as Solar, Wind, and Hydro.
With time, focus and funds we have the potential to store and meet the base load of these sources. There are many places on this earth that are exposed to full on sun or wind most of the time.
It is critical to factor in all Costs, especially the Health of Our Planet and Lives.
Loretta Huston -
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An Ideal Source of Power: Is Stable, Consistent, Baseline Power that can be Responsive to Demand.
Solar and Wind are far from consistent. These resources have to be overbuilt in number to compensate for cloudy days or inconstant winds.
Coal, Natural Gas, and Nuclear can be 'turned on' to meet demand.
Abundant NW Green Columbia Power Administration HydroElectricity supplies 80% of Power needs in 90% of Oregon--generally everything outside of PDX metro.
Biomass can provide a responsive power source that can be brought on-line to replace the Boardman Coal Plant.
Can SwitchGrass be a source of Biomass? Faster growing, more efficient Carbon Sequestration.