Environmental and Energy Study Institute

Sustainable Forest Biomass Conference Call - November 8, 2007

This discussion was among a group of people actively involved in sustainable forest management and/or energy production from forest biomass. There was a consensus that increasing the use (and consequently, the value) of forest biomass has the potential to boost the quality of forest management on both private and public land. In either case, a common theme throughout the discussion was the importance of obtaining community buy-in for a project to be successful. Those projects that obtained this buy-in had two important commonalities: A) community groups were actively involved in each step of the planning and implementation processes, and B) projects were located in communities that had a history of industry and/or rural enterprises. Once again, scale was pointed out as being an important consideration. In order to be acceptable and successful, projects need to be tailored to meet the needs AND resources of the community involved – more often than not, this means small scale utilization of biomass for thermal energy or combined-heat-and-power (CHP) as opposed to large power generating facilities. There were a number of issues relating specifically to the extraction of biomass from federal forestland. Thinning is a key component of management on many federal forests, especially those at risk from catastrophic wildfire, but thinning and fuel removal treatments are costly treatments and therefore are left undone on many acres. Stewardship contracts are one possible solution. These are contracts between federal managers and private companies in which a mix of merchantable and unmerchantable trees are harvested, with the value of the services rendered offset by the value of the material removed. This is a low cost, even no cost, approach to federal management. Another suggested approach would be a federal subsidy for wood-based energy enterprises willing to undertake thinning operations. In addition to these suggestions, the group stressed the need for solid, scientific sustainability guidelines and a need to equalize the incentives for all forms of biomass energy. For instance, thermal energy is not eligible for the same incentives as electric energy, even though it is a more energetically efficient process (one ton of wood will displace more fossil fuels if used to produce heat than if used to produce power).

Here are more detailed notes of this conference call (.PDF)