&ldquo;Embryonic,&rdquo; &ldquo;very young,&rdquo; &ldquo;in its infancy,&rdquo; &ldquo;growing&rdquo;&mdash;these are all terms people working to expand the domestic bulk wood pellet distribution infrastructure use to describe its current state. And that&rsquo;s in the Northeast, the most developed region of the U.S. Elsewhere, the word &ldquo;nonexistent&rdquo; is accurate. When describing how the bulk pellet distribution infrastructure should be modeled, a simple explanation for this complex problem is heating oil. A customer with an oil furnace is confident multiple companies can provide bulk fuel oil deliveries. Conversely, heating oil distributors are assured that enough customers exist to justify storage and truck investments needed for a regional depot. Fuel from a centralized location is delivered to a decentralized storage tank, where trucks load up and drive to nearby customers. The driver unwinds a hose, flips a switch and fuel is dispensed into the customer&rsquo;s fuel tank as the output is accurately metered. A relatively long-term, hands-off supply of heating fuel is successfully delivered. For some smaller residential pellet stove users, dumping individual 40-pound bags into a hopper is part of the experience. For larger residential pellet boilers or commercial installations, this would be like having a 1,000-gallon fuel oil delivery come on pallets of 5-gallon pails. Mimicking the century-old liquid fossil fuel distribution infrastructure is precisely what wood pellet industry stakeholders are trying to do. But important distinctions exist, such as fostering relationships between forests and communities, developing markets for low-value trees while improving forest health, promoting appropriately sized production based on regional demand, boosting local economies by retaining heating dollars in-state while providing green jobs and lowering carbon footprints of communities, one house or business at a time. Vermont Knowing what needs to be done is one thing, but how to go about it is another. For the bulk pellet market, does the demand incentivize buildout of supply, or does adequate, reliable supply help create demand? &ldquo;This is a classic chicken-and-egg scenario,&rdquo; says Andy Boutin, the chief operating officer of Renewable Fuels of Vermont, a 30,000-ton pellet mill in West Windsor, Vermont, formerly owned by Queston Inc. Boutin is also founder and general manager of Pellergy, a bulk pellet boiler manufacturer and importer. &ldquo;If you develop the infrastructure, there&rsquo;s a much better chance of bringing more customers online,&rdquo; Boutin says. &ldquo;If customers have to rely on one company for fuel, or a fledgling operation that doesn&rsquo;t have much infrastructure behind it, or one mill and one loadout facility, there&rsquo;s a level of risk investing $10,000 in a new heating system and potentially not having delivery. So by developing bulk distribution on a commercial level&mdash;manufacturing and delivery&mdash;this gives customers a sense of comfort and lower risk. The dollars are being invested in the right area now, which is infrastructure. Where should that money come from?&rdquo;&nbsp; The industry is looking toward government and renewable energy credit investments in wood pellet heating for a number of reasons, according to Boutin, which include that it&rsquo;s renewable and provides local jobs, but there is a compounding effect from heating homes with a local fuel source. &ldquo;Eighty&nbsp; cents of every dollar from oil goes out of state,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;With pellets, 83 to 84 cents of every dollar stays in state. That&rsquo;s a huge change in the economic outlook for the Vermont economy. That&rsquo;s part of the impetus for public investment in bulk pellet infrastructure development. We can see true economic impacts, from homeowners saving money all the way to landowners realizing better profits off managed forestland from low-grade wood.&rdquo; Last spring, the Vermont Department of Public Service announced five grant awards totaling nearly half a million dollars from the Clean Energy Development Fund to support bulk pellet infrastructure development. RFV was awarded $48,475 to support a $138,500 project to make bulk pellet improvements at its mill. Boutin says when RFV took over from Queston, the mill lacked enough storage capacity to fill more than one bulk truck in a day&rsquo;s time. &ldquo;It was very limiting for us, even though when we first started producing pellets we only had one bulk customer,&rdquo; Boutin says. &ldquo;But they wanted to come three times a day, and it would take eight hours to put our production into the silo to fill a bulk truck.&rdquo; The grant stipulated a 137-ton storage minimum. RFV built a 155-ton silo, which can service multiple bulk delivery trucks in an eight- or 12-hour window. The project also included reconfiguring the whole finished product line to integrate the silo in the process. &ldquo;We installed a new Z conveyor, which transfers pellets horizontally and vertically with one conveyance system,&rdquo; Boutin says. &ldquo;And relaying the pellets from the mill to the new bulk silo, we built a whole new layout, which included relocating the pellet cooler, new conveyors feeding the cooler, a new screener, the Z conveyor, the silo, and new outfeed equipment&mdash;we put in a new 50-foot conveyor to load out to the bulk hopper.&rdquo; In early September, RFV proved out the system with two bulk fills in six hours. Now RFV can fulfill the needs of its preexisting bulk customer while adding another&mdash;Bourne&rsquo;s Energy. Bourne&rsquo;s Energy is a 70-year-old heating fuel distribution company. Majority owner Peter Bourne has been running the business started by his father for 44 years. Bourne&rsquo;s Energy distributes biodiesel-blended heating oil and entered the wood pellet market with bagged product delivery about five years ago. Bourne says two years ago, the company began investigating bulk pellet delivery. He says what&rsquo;s needed to expand bulk pellet distribution is system reliability and customer confidence in mechanical heating systems. &ldquo;Consumers don&rsquo;t want something they have to fuss with,&rdquo; Bourne says. &ldquo;They want something similar to what they have in their existing systems. When pellet systems get there, that&rsquo;ll help move distribution forward. Most people have only seen a stove in the basement or living room, they haven&rsquo;t really experienced central heating systems.&rdquo; Bourne says the nicer, reliable central pellet heating systems are expensive, so support is needed to incentivize the hefty investment. &ldquo;If I were replacing an oil or propane heating system, that&rsquo;s a lot less cost than installing a central pellet boiler,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;That needs to be dealt with, maybe through low financing and better tax breaks. I&rsquo;m not sure what the answer is. People tend to buy the cheapest heating product. It&rsquo;s just the nature of the customer. To say we need more federal, state or local investment&mdash;I hesitate to go there. But when it comes to getting pellet systems into homes, it&rsquo;s a financial burden so the customer has to be committed to take that step.&rdquo; Bourne says two years ago, he bought a used truck to outfit with pneumatics for bulk pellet delivery. Once converted, it was challenging to drive the truck two hours away in wintery conditions to the nearest bulk pellet silos and back again for deliveries. Bourne&rsquo;s Energy applied for the CEDF grant in Vermont and was awarded $21,593 to support construction of a $61,693 bulk pellet storage silo nearby, sized at 53 tons. Bourne says he hopes to have the silo functioning late September. Interestingly, Bourne says he does not yet have enough bulk customers to justify its construction, so the grant was instrumental. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in the business and we plan to be for years to come, so we have to invest,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a dance between the cutting edge and bleeding edge, and we&rsquo;ve hit the bleeding edge a few times, but we&rsquo;re willing to take a reasonable risk.&rdquo; Bourne&rsquo;s Energy is now a dealer of RFV&rsquo;s bagged and bulk Green Mountain Pellets brand. Bourne says if he were constantly scrambling for bulk pellets, he&rsquo;d build out more. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I do have demand, and I want to grow&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t want to float on the edge of chaos driving hours on icy roads to get bulk pellets. So we needed to make an investment to be a significant player in the market.&rdquo; Author Steven Johnson suggests the line between order and chaos is where solutions are found and innovation begins. Also in Vermont, Tabitha Bowling is developing a pellet project, Kingdom Pellets, in the three-county region known as the Northeast Kingdom. She and her business partner Chris Brooks, CEO of Vermont Wood Pellet Co. LLC, a 17,000-ton pellet mill in North Clarendon, Vermont, say demand is key to building infrastructure. &ldquo;Our opinion is not if you build it they will come, but rather demand drives supply,&rdquo; Bowling says. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s standing in the way of growing bulk pellet distribution is people who need bulk pellets&mdash;home owners making the switch, or a school or municipal building. Demand will drive the need for more bulk delivery. It&rsquo;s happening here in Vermont, in pockets. Market trends and forces will drive traditional fuel distributors to broaden their delivery choices. But we need more people to be aware of this option. Awareness is a big part of driving demand.&rdquo; &ldquo;Our consumers are making a statement with their dollars,&rdquo; Brooks says. &ldquo;In Vermont, people understand it&rsquo;s a local guy making the fuel and providing income for local people. And people are also buying because pellets have an incredibly low carbon footprint. The new mill we&rsquo;re building will use 100 percent hydropower and wood from a 30-mile radius. We&rsquo;ll use waste heat to make electricity. Pellets are not a blood diamond. They&rsquo;re not oil from who knows where. They&rsquo;re not straining the community in an outflow of cash. It&rsquo;s community based.&rdquo; Kingdom Pellets applied for five grants, says Bowling, mostly state but some federal. The project was awarded $250,000 from Vermont&rsquo;s CEDF to support the estimated $4.57 million cost to repurpose a former paper mill. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin also announced that $550,000 had been awarded to the town of Lunenburg in community development funds. The town will loan the funds to Kingdom Pellets. Bowling says site work is anticipated to begin next spring with production starting in the fall. &ldquo;We anticipate providing 6,000 tons for the 2017-&rsquo;18 season, and the following year 23,000 tons, and we&rsquo;ll be scaled to produce up to 30,000 tons,&rdquo; she says. Rob Riley, president of the Northern Forest Center, weighs in on the bulk pellet market&rsquo;s chicken-and-egg situation. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t have individual customers until they have distribution of locally produced fuel they can consume,&rdquo; Riley says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bullish on customers being the best advertisement for the technology we&rsquo;re talking about here. They can be a town hall using and promoting it, or an individual consumer. But I believe in the context of our current infrastructure, we need more and more installations&mdash;demand illustrating the fuel is good, stable in cost, and providing beneficial returns to the environment. Lots of things have to be in play at the same time&mdash;demand, service, installers, supply, all in some coordinated fashion. That&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re trying to do as the industry develops.&rdquo; NFC&rsquo;s goal for 20 years has been to diversify and maintain a vibrant forest economy and communities within that landscape. More recently, the organization has invested resources in wood energy. In partnership with companies such as Maine Energy Systems, NFC has helped develop model neighborhood projects. &ldquo;We have four of them underway or completed,&rdquo; Riley says, adding that state rebates and additional financing provided by NFC helped communities like Berlin, New Hampshire, achieve the highest per capita density of pellet boilers in the country. This included 40 residential units and several commercial or institutional installations. Currently, NFC has a project in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. &ldquo;Our goal is to increase the bulk distribution network to create bulk demand for local pellets,&rdquo; Riley says. In all, NFC has been instrumental in 125 pellet boiler installations across the region. Over the next year, Riley says NFC is working to establish an effective communications front to increase awareness and develop common language to convey the value bulk pellet markets bring to communities. New York In New York, the Southern Tier Bulk Wood Pellet Program, funded by New York State&rsquo;s Cleaner, Greener Communities grant program and executed by Cornell Cooperative Extension, Ehrhart Energy and MESA Reduction Engineering, is working to get the state&rsquo;s embryonic bulk pellet market off the ground. Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County Energy Team Leader Guillermo Metz says for the bulk market to take off, delivery is essential. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the main thing,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Our program was built around partnerships with industry. The idea is we were going to help pass money from NYSERDA to companies looking to transition to pellets by getting bulk delivery trucks and building a loadout silo with a local pellet plant in the region.&rdquo; That pellet plant was New England Wood Pellet LLC, but it recently pulled out of the program. In addition, the program helped develop two demo sites with pellet boilers at a greenhouse and museum. This multipronged approach, Metz says, intended to infuse actual capital into both the supply and demand side simultaneously. &ldquo;The residential market is slow to take off, so that alone wouldn&rsquo;t make a big impact on the delivery side,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;So we thought a couple of commercial anchors and a whole bunch of promotion to entice interest were necessary. Neither one could survive without the other. You can&rsquo;t put in a large boiler without bulk delivery. A bunch of residential customers alone wouldn&rsquo;t do it, so we needed a few commercial customers. This has to happen at the same time. So we are fortunate New York State was open to seeing what happens when they throw money at both sides.&rdquo; While states like Vermont have developed strong connections between forestry and the thermal biomass industry, Metz says their market analysis shows that in New York there must be greater emphasis on this. &ldquo;In New York, it&rsquo;s weak,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Forestry people here don&rsquo;t see pellets as viable or anything to be concerned with. We are heavily forested but we have very little harvesting of low-value trees. So until there&rsquo;s a market for that, and some sort of carbon tax or valuation that disincentivizes fossil fuels so we&rsquo;re not subject to the whim of oil prices going up and down, the industry here won&rsquo;t to respond to that kind of insecurity.&rdquo; Author: Ron Kotrba Senior Editor, Biomass Magazine 218-745-8347 rkotrba@bbiinternational.com

FILL â€˜ER UP: A Vermont Renewable Fuels bulk pellet truck loads up at Renewable Fuels of Vermontâ€™s elevated 24-ton hopper, now fed from RFVâ€™s internal 155-ton bulk silo it installed with assistance from the Vermont Clean Energy Development Fund 

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BOURNE SUPREMACY: Majority owner Peter Bourne has been running Bourneâ€™s Energy for nearly half a century, and he wants his company to be a significant player in the bulk wood pellet distribution game.  

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Solutions are said to be found along the fine line between order and chaos, so perhaps this is where the answer lies to expanding a nascent U.S. bulk wood pellet distribution infrastructure.    

Molding the Bulk Market

With Washington and the rest of the country focusing on the November elections, the Clean Power Plan stuck in the courts, and U.S. EPA&rsquo;s Science Advisory Board unable to conclude its five-year odyssey on biogenic accounting, you would think that not much is happening to promote biomass energy. In fact, from Maine to California, states are embracing biomass energy through administrative and legislative actions. Take Maine as an example. More than 15 years ago, in a landmark decision, the Maine Public Utilities Commission ruled that a 50-MW biomass plant&mdash;now owned and operated by ReEnergy&mdash;could sell power to an adjacent sawmill (Stratton Lumber)&mdash;without being regulated as a local utility. I was on hand this week to witness what can happen when sensible state policy&mdash;here applying to combined heat and power&mdash;is done right. In part because of its ability to purchase biomass power, Stratton Lumber now counts 100 employees. The lumber mill purchases 2 MW of power purchased from ReEnergy using 25,000 tons of waste bark that would otherwise be landfilled. Without that ruling by the Maine PUC, the success in Stratton may never have happened. The next stop on our tour was Athens. Maine Wood Pellets in Athens, Maine, the state&rsquo;s largest manufacturer of wood pellets, is installing a biomass electric facility to produce both electricity for sale to the grid, and heat for use in the pellet drying process. Under development for years, this project has a power purchase agreement (PPA) approved by the Maine Public Utilities in August 2013. This project will help diversify what is already a well-run pellet mill, and the use of the heat in addition to electricity generation will improve the facility&rsquo;s profit margins. Maine is not the only state to recognize the need for strong policy to support biomass power. The California state government is also doing its part to help biomass.&nbsp; First, the background. Currently, California is experiencing a massive tree mortality problem with around 66 million dead trees&mdash;an estimated 50 million tons of fiber&mdash;lying fallow in California forestlands. On top of that, many biomass facilities are experiencing difficulties renewing PPAs that have recently expired due to stiff competition from other energy sources. With the closure of biomass facilities, in addition to potentially removing a destination to put dead tree wood to productive use, other fuels like abundant agriculture residues and urban construction waste are in danger of going unused. Please view our recently released Bioenergy Day 2016 video on biomass power in California for a more detailed overview, at www.usabiomass.org. Fortunately, California&rsquo;s state government is aware of the problem and is actively implementing solutions to alleviate the burden on biomass. In September, the state&rsquo;s legislature approved SB 859, a bill that requires certain utilities to purchase power from biomass facilities for a period of five years. The bill outlines specific conditions for the purchase of biomass power: &bull; 125 MW to be shared by investor-owned utilities and municipalities with 100,000-plus customers. &bull; Contracts are limited to five years. &bull; 80 percent of the fuel shall come from a byproduct of sustainable forestry management, including from lands that fall into Tier 1 and Tier 2 fire risk classifications (the highest risk areas near homes, recreation, infrastructure, community developments and watersheds). At least 60 percent must come from Tier 1 and Tier 2 lands and not from lands that have been clear-cut. SB 859 provides policy direction on many other issues, including the use of the state&rsquo;s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the growing pot of money California collects as part of its groundbreaking cap-and-trade system. Added to the &ldquo;BioRAM&rdquo; initiative by Gov. Jerry Brown last year mandating a purchase of 50 MW of biomass power, the new requirements make significant progress toward keeping facilities open for the foreseeable future. With much of the federal legislative and regulatory activity with potential to benefit biomass on hold for now, state activities can make a big difference in the future of the biomass industry. Please contact me directly if you would like to discuss any of the details. &nbsp; Author: Bob Cleaves President, Biomass Power Association bob@biomasspowerassociation.com www.biomasspowerassociation.com

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With much of the federal legislative and regulatory activity with potential to benefit biomass on hold for now, state activities can make a big difference in the future of the biomass industry.

Biomass Policy: States Doing Their Part

UPM Biofuels promotes team members Sari Mannonen has been appointed vice president of UPM Biofuels Strategic Business Unit. Since 2014, Mannonen has worked as director of sales and marketing within UPM Biofuels, where she was responsible for commercial strategy and product launches in the biofuels business. Mannonen has worked for UPM since 2011, holding various leadership positions. Before joining UPM, she worked for Lindstrom and Biohit. Petri Kukkonen vice president of UPM Biofuels Development. He has been leading UPM Biofuels since 2007 and developed the new UPM Biofuels business with a team of professionals to become a profitable business. In his new role, he will prepare UPM Biofuels&rsquo; next steps together with a development team.&nbsp;&nbsp; ASGCO announces belt cleaning system ASGCO has announced the availability of its Super-Skalper HD, a belt cleaning system for high-speed, high-volume conveyors. Available in several blade configurations, ASGCO&rsquo;s Super-Skalper HD can tackle tough carry-back applications. The one-piece mounting tube and E-Z Torque Tensioner applies consistent and proper pressure ensuring constant cleaning contact throughout the life of the blade.&nbsp; In addition, the blade wear indicator allows blade wear to be monitored without having to shut down the system for inspection and can be done in minutes, without tools. ABO elects board members The Algae Biomass Organization has announced the election of six members to its board of directors for the 2016-'18 term. ABO has also welcomed Jacques Beaudry-Losique, senior vice president of corporate and business development for Algenol as the new board chair, and David Hazlebeck, founder and CEO of Global Algae Innovations, as vice chair. Newly elected board members include Amha Belay, chief technology officer of Earthrise Nutritionals; Genet Garamendi, senior vice president of TerraVia; Raffi Mardirosian vice president of Joule Unlimited; Stephen Mayfield, director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology; Leslie van der Meulen, general manager of BioProcess Algae LLC; Xun Wang, president of Triton Algae Innovations Ltd; and Ross Zirkle, director of molecular biotechnology at DSM Nutritional Products. The new and reelected board members join 12 other members who are already serving terms on the board. Integrated Global Services awarded contract by Drax Integrated Global Services, a leader in the development and application of high-velocity thermal spray solutions for corrosion and erosion problems in mission-critical equipment, has been awarded a long-term contract with Drax Power Station. Drax operates six power generation units, producing approximately 8 percent of Great Britain&rsquo;s electric power demands. Almost half of the station has been upgraded to burn wood pellets. The units suffer from wastage on evaporator walls due to fireside corrosion. Waste on pressure parts can lead to unplanned outages. To address this wastage, Drax had the option of changing out pressure parts or extending component life with the use of high-velocity metal coating. The plant selected to engage IGS to apply a proprietary high-velocity arc spray coating. The first project was successfully implemented in May, during which IGS protected more than 400 square meters of surface with its process.

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Business Briefs

College and university campuses are loaded with physical attributes that make them ripe for biomass deployments, particularly the numerous buildings that are densely packed into a small area and have significant thermal demands. In this month&rsquo;s issue of Biomass Magazine, which is focused on on-site biomass energy deployments and distributed energy, Associate Editor Katie Fletcher&rsquo;s page-18 feature, &ldquo;Passing the Test,&rdquo; finds that colleges and universities also typically possess the right cultural attributes for exploring and eventually adopting biomass solutions. Fletcher&rsquo;s story begins at the University of Maine at Farmington, and neatly outlines how a biomass-fired district heating system was a perfect match for not only the existing campus infrastructure, but also for the university&rsquo;s long-term carbon goals. While writing the feature, Fletcher spoke with Mark Power from Trane, the UMF project service contractor. Power told her, &ldquo;They (UMF) weren&rsquo;t meeting their own [carbon] goals until this project came in, and now they&rsquo;ve blown them away.&rdquo; While the UMF project did offer the university some annual savings, they weren&rsquo;t as eye-popping as they would have been a few years ago, and the nonfinancial goals of the new system helped the university achieve buttress campuswide support for the project. Each of the installations in Fletcher&rsquo;s feature do far more than prove that biomass heating is an economically viable solution for universities and colleges set in biomass-rich regions. As Senior Editor Ron Kotrba discovered while writing his page-12 story, &ldquo;Molding the Bulk Pellet Market,&rdquo; large biomass demand centers like UMF can go a long way in building a foundation for greater investment in delivery infrastructure. Kotrba&rsquo;s story explores the chicken-and-egg dilemma of biomass delivery infrastructure that Biomass Magazine has been following and reporting on for years. End-users are reluctant to transition toward a fuel with a short roster of suppliers. Conversely, fuel suppliers considering investing in biomass delivery vehicles, drivers and storage depots need to have a clear line of sight on robust demand. It is easy to read Fletcher&rsquo;s and Kotrba&rsquo;s stories and begin connecting some dots: UMF&rsquo;s fuel spend is expected to approach $250,000 annually, contracted revenue that provides their supplier some vital surety as they look to grow their biomass business. We embrace colleges and universities because of the role they play in advancing new thinking and new ideas. It might be a reach to call biomass energy a new idea, but it is becoming clear that the biomass industry may have no bigger champion than our institutions of higher learning. Author: Tim Portz Vice President of Content&nbsp; &amp; Executive Editor tportz@bbiinternational.com

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College and university campuses are loaded with physical attributes that make them ripe for biomass deployments.

On Campus 

Every year in the U.S., 37 million tons of food waste are sent to landfills&mdash;the equivalent of 514 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. At Seattle&rsquo;s $125-per-ton tipping fee, this waste would amount to $4.6 billion annually. If used for biogas production, at 4,200 cubic feet per ton, this same amount of waste could power five million homes for an entire year. Unlike intermittent solar panels and wind turbines, biogas is available anytime day or night, rain or shine, and since biogas can be stored in a gas form until needed, it does not require external storage, such as batteries. Since 2008, government incentives for solar have averaged $39 billion per year, while less than $10 million total has gone to biogas since 2008. This $195 billion increased PV solar capacity from 0.02 percent to 4.2 percent of renewable electric from 2008-'15, an increase from 0.0 to 0.6 percent of total U.S. electricity. Had this $195 billion instead gone to purchasing 19,500 $10 million-dollar biogas plants, instead of a net decrease in biomass electric output from 14 percent in 2008 to 11.68 percent in 2015, it could have potentially increased the percent of American renewable electricity from biomass to 34 percent. It would be providing 4 percent of total U.S. electricity with around-the-clock energy that is not weather-, time- or day-dependent. When examining America&rsquo;s potential biogas future, one should look at Europe. While biogas remains highly obscure in the U.S., the European market has grown exponentially since the 1990s, driven primarily by the European carbon trading system established following the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, together with instability of natural gas prices in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over this period, Germany has emerged as the world&rsquo;s first major renewable energy economy, with an estimated 8,500 biogas plants, compared to 2,000 in the U.S. Renewable energy in Germany has grown from 6.3 percent of total energy to 30 percent between 2000 and 2014. Biomass, including biogas and direct burning and gasification, accounts for 30 percent of renewable electric and 70 percent of Germany&rsquo;s total renewable energy. &nbsp;Germany&rsquo;s ambitious biogas program has been driven by five important factors: widespread public support and government incentives for biogas, carbon credits, high electricity rates, established market for plant byproducts among farm community, and a large number of skilled biogas workers. These factors have contributed to the profitability of biogas projects in Germany, and given German public officials and permitting agencies the confidence to approve and promote future biogas projects. European carbon credits have averaged &euro;10 ($11.15) per metric ton since trading began in 2005, and at times trading above &euro;30 per metric ton. The European carbon credit system was devised for solar panels, and became a cash cow for biogas plants producing orders of magnitude more power 24/7, making biogas plants highly attractive investments. Even at &euro;10 per metric ton, for example, a biogas plant in Europe processing 80 tons per day and generating 750,000 cubic feet of biogas per day, could be eligible for over $5 million worth of fossil carbon per year. This potentially allows $10 million to $15 million biogas plants in Germany to pay for themselves in two to three years. The same plant in the U.S. would require decades to pay for itself, much less become profitable to owners and investors. Unlike most European countries, the U.S. did not sign onto the U.N.&rsquo;s 1992 Kyoto Protocol. The short-lived Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) was America&rsquo;s only attempt at carbon trading, and ceased trading in 2010, after carbon prices hovered at 10 cents per ton for almost a year. The CCX achieved its highest price, $7.40 per ton in 2008, coinciding with the release of An Inconvenient Truth. A film that incidentally makes no mention of biogas, even though the carbon in biogas&mdash;the C in the CH4&mdash;is biogenic carbon, part of the Earth&rsquo;s natural biosphere and can replace fossil carbon Btu-for-Btu. Humans exhale biogenic carbon every few seconds.&nbsp; One potential revenue stream where the German and U.S. biogas markets coincide, is landfill tipping fees, which have been rising across the nation an average of $2 per year since 1995. Some select cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, have exceeded $100 per ton for waste disposal and implemented ambitious organics diversion programs.&nbsp; Many European biogas providers have opened offices in the U.S. in preparation for anticipated demand, however, they continue to attempt to force large, centralized biogas plants through the square hole of an American public that has never heard of biogas, much less understand its benefits. The European biogas model fails to take into account the fundamental realities in the U.S., where there are none of the major economic advantages to biogas in Europe. One of the most persistent myths in the biogas industry, perpetuated by European biogas providers doing business in the U.S. is that biogas plants are only economical at a certain scale. In the U.S., this claim is backwards. The microorganisms that produce biogas do not care what size tank they are in, and the conditions inside a 15,000-gallon fermentation tank are far easier to control than a 1 million-gallon tank.&nbsp; Decentralized biogas takes this simple, natural process out of the hands of farm and dairy owners, and municipal wastewater treatment plant managers, and could potentially place it in the hands of thousands of large and mid-size businesses in urban environments to increase avoided costs. The above table represents the total addressable market for 1-ton per day food waste biodigesters in urban environments with a base price of $325,000.&nbsp; In cities with high electric and waste disposal rates, such as Seattle or San Francisco, such a system could potentially pay for itself in less than 10 years. This payback period does not exceed ten years anywhere in the U.S., and will decrease as landfill. The European large-scale biogas model has become a box canyon in America, where there are few public financial resources available to biogas projects and businesses. Smaller, on-site biogas plants sold business-to-business that limit the number of stakeholders and minimize government involvement are a more appropriate choice for American urban waste-to-energy projects. Continuing to ignore the great diversity of America and American businesses, and continuing the attempt to replicate the European model will only result in more high-profile financial failures of biogas plants, and further complicate the already Herculean task of spreading accurate information about biogas throughout the U.S. It is not the intent of this article to imply there should not be any large-scale biogas projects in the U.S., or in any way minimize the excellent work of those in large-scale biogas. Of course, there will always be many projects that lend themselves to centralized biogas plants. But the mountains of bureaucratic red tape involved in urban food waste biogas projects, where this hidden $11.8 billion market lies, can be easily avoided or greatly reduced by smaller, decentralized biogas plants. Attempting to recreate European biogas success on this side of the pond is what has left American biogas technology decades behind the rest of the world. Authors: Warren Weisman CEO, American Future Energy w.weisman@hestiabiogas.com 541-337-5690

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Rhe mountains of bureaucratic red tape involved in urban food waste biogas projects, where this hidden $11.8 billion market lies, can be easily avoided or greatly reduced by smaller, decentralized biogas plants.

Distributed Biogas: $11.8 Billion Market  Hidden in Plain Sight

Last winter, about a mile from the small, picturesque town of Farmington, Maine, University of Maine at Farmington Director of Facilities Jeffrey McKay recalls looking over the campus and observing a single plume of steam&nbsp; rising into the chilly winter morning air. On a cold day just one year earlier, smoke stacks billowing into the sky were visible from 22 different collegiate buildings. For UMF, the decision to implement a biomass district heating project was driven by a couple factors. &ldquo;One reason is less volatility than the fossil fuel market, traditionally,&rdquo; says Mark Power, energy services team leader with Trane and energy service contractor on the project. &ldquo;In this particular case, the campus was heating primarily with oil with a little bit of propane in the mix, and they had been subject to price volatility over the years, so there was a desire to do something to reduce their operating cost.&rdquo; Not only was a more attractive economic option desired, but UMF&rsquo;s mechanical plants were aging and needed replacement. &ldquo;They had concerns about downtime, maintaining enrollment and providing good services to their customers who are ultimately the students,&rdquo; Power says. This year, as students get back to the books, UMF will make sure they are comfortable for the chilly fall and winter months by heating their surroundings with locally sourced wood chips. Heating oil, propane and natural gas market volatility, alongside solar and wind power intermittency, make baseload, renewable biomass an attractive option for a number of heating installations. The economic and environmental attributes of biomass have encouraged the wave of district heating projects like UMF that have sprung up across North America over the past decade. Whether fully operating, contracted or a long-term vision in mind, biomass projects particularly make sense where the resource is readily available, replacement of an older, inefficient system is needed and the institution has environmental initiatives to meet. Carbon Neutral Campus Power&rsquo;s team at Trane installed the UMF central heating plant and fired up the boiler this past February and it was &ldquo;working fabulously&rdquo; for the few months it was running, McKay says. Power agrees, calling it a &ldquo;technical success.&rdquo; The project includes the installation of a 500 horsepower Messersmith biomass unit&mdash;equipped with a propane gas burner and gas train for backup&mdash;and approximately two miles of new underground hot water distribution system piping connecting it to a majority of the campus buildings. &ldquo;It eliminated the use of all of the old heating plants,&rdquo; Power says. Four existing boilers were retrofitted to serve as injection points for the hot water distribution loop. The fuel for the backups is a mix&mdash;one of the backup plants is run on propane and the other three on fuel oil. &ldquo;That gives them the option during the nonheating summertime season, depending on the fuel market, they can either use propane or oil to provide their domestic hot water,&rdquo; Power adds. Trane has been involved in several major biomass conversion projects, including installing heating systems at the Maine schools of Caribou High School, Limestone Community School, Fort Fairfield Schools and Greenville High School. &ldquo;This is certainly the largest biomass conversion project that Trane has been involved in, in the U.S.,&rdquo; Power states. In fact, Powers says, this is the largest hot water heating plant in the state of Maine. Colby College has a plant that is larger, but it&rsquo;s a combined-heat-and-power plant. According to McKay, truck traffic decreased from 36 to 40 trucks of oil per week to just four or five trucks hauling local wood chips onto the campus. The central heating plant has an underground storage bunker that can hold about 120 tons or about three truckloads of wood chips&mdash;a four-day supply at peak load. Ash, which is raked every two to three days, is used in the campus compost program, under which it is applied to local farms and even the university&rsquo;s athletic fields. The ash is applied locally from wood sourced from the campus&rsquo;s own backyard. &ldquo;We just went out to bid on our chips and we put in some sustainability initiatives&mdash;for example, we only want chips within a 50-mile radius of campus, and things like that, so it truly has an impact on the local economy,&rdquo; McKay says. UMF contracted with Cousineaus Forest Products and spends about $250,000 per year on wood chips, which, based on the multipliers McKay has heard, has about a million-dollar impact on the local economy, plus the added reduction in carbon emissions. Estimated annualized savings from the switch to wood chips are $800,000 per year, with a simple payback of approximately 10 years. Power says that this is why it&rsquo;s such a fantastic fuel-switch opportunity, not to mention to meet the campus climate commitment to become carbon neutral by year 2035. &ldquo;They weren&rsquo;t meeting their own goals until this project came in and now they&rsquo;ve blown their goals away,&rdquo; Power says. Since the boiler&rsquo;s capacity is in excess of 10 million Btu, an electrostatic precipitator (ESP) was installed to meet the federal air standards within the U.S. EPA&rsquo;s boiler MACT rule. It hasn&rsquo;t been running during the summer months, as a full heat load is not needed in the summer to circulate hot water, but McKay is getting ready to fire the plant up again in late October. Work in Progress UMF joins a number of universities that will fire up their biomass systems, welcoming students back to campus for fall and winter studies, while others will spend this winter getting ready to break ground and go vertical. Goddard College, located on a 100-plus-year-old farmstead in Plainfield, Vermont, announced in May it will receive a $2.1 million USDA community facilities loan once it has built a biomass central heating plant. According to Tim Maker, project manager with Community Biomass Systems Inc., they are getting bids back at the end of November, and will then hire the general contractor. &ldquo;We look at this as a 2017 project, so as soon as the ground thaws in the spring, we&rsquo;ll start work probably around May 1,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Essentially, in the summertime most of the work will be done, and the system will become functional next fall about a year from now.&rdquo; Maker adds it will take some time to get the heat load up to full capacity next winter. This has been a long time coming for Goddard. The idea for implementing a central biomass system to heat the campus&rsquo;s 23 historic buildings was first brought up in 2008, with a feasibility study following showing biomass as a favorable option. However, there was some pushback. Maker says with permits in hand, the project went out to bid in 2011, but its permits were appealed by four neighbors who felt the idea of having a biomass plant at Goddard college was an intrusion into the bucolic nature of their neighborhood. Maker adds that these sentiments were felt despite the fact Vermont has around 45 public schools, including one in Plainfield, that have biomass systems. This battle has been ongoing for the past four years, but the project is now finally able to switch out 22 aging oil boilers with a 3 million-Btu Messersmith biomass boiler, replacing an estimated 40,000 gallons of fuel oil. &ldquo;We just made the decision to use propane instead of oil for the backup and the hope is that the backup boilers will be little used,&rdquo; Maker says. Goddard&rsquo;s system is much smaller than UMF&rsquo;s biomass heating unit, but it still chose to install an ESP for particulate matter control. &ldquo;There is no federal requirement whatsoever, in fact, there isn&rsquo;t even a state requirement, that doesn&rsquo;t kick in until you get to boilers about 50 percent larger than the one to be used here,&rdquo; Maker says. &ldquo;It is really unprecedented for an institution to take on that expense, so it can be right on the cutting edge of the cleanest biomass combustion at this scale.&rdquo; Although oil prices are down, resulting in less dramatic savings than when the project was initially conceived, the college still faced an estimated $500,000 cost to replace oil boilers over the next 10 years. Besides the need for a new heating system, Goddard President Bob Kenny highlights the abundance and availability of biomass, saying that Washington County, Vermont, &ldquo;has an immense amount of wood available for this enterprise.&rdquo; He adds that the area is now probably along the order of 75 percent or greater covered with trees. Maker says universities like Goddard make sense for biomass district heating projects because it&rsquo;s more or less plug and play. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve already got a central system that heats all of your buildings, going into one location and adding a biomass boiler makes a lot of economic sense.&rdquo; A number of Vermont institutions of higher education have installed biomass systems, but, Maker adds, economics should be evaluated from a long-term view, without the expectation of a couple-year payback. Colleges in the U.S. aren&rsquo;t the only ones taking a long-term look at biomass as a heating option. Just this summer, Simon Fraser University located on British Columbia&rsquo;s West Coast completed negotiations with Corix Multi-Utility Services Inc. to finance, design, construct, own and operate a new central energy plant, burning uncontaminated wood waste such as wood chips, shavings and sawdust for heating and domestic hot water. This plant will service SFU&rsquo;s Burnaby campus and the UniverCity community&mdash;a sustainable community located on top of Burnaby Mountain, adjacent to SFU. According to Larry Waddell, SFU chief facilities officer, the community-based district energy utility uses a temporary natural gas plant, which was approved by the BC Utilities Commission in 2011, and the first customers were connected in early 2012. &ldquo;While the development of the UniverCity district energy system was underway, SFU was also evaluating initiatives for potential replacement of their existing natural gas-based central energy plant that supplies thermal energy to SFU campus,&rdquo; Waddell says. SFU and Corix signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct the analysis of a combined thermal energy plant that would serve both the campus as well as UniverCity. Various alternative energy sources, plant location and sizing were evaluated and the results demonstrated significant benefits to proceed with a single, central energy plant, in which, biomass energy was the most viable solution for the energy requirements. The energy facility will be installed on the southern portion of the campus currently located on the site of an older parking and storage facility and will significantly improve the visual character of this undeveloped site. At build-out, the plant is expected to reduce campus greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from heating by 85 percent and reduce SFU&rsquo;s GHG emissions from all sources by 69 percent. These emission reductions are expected to surpass the provincially mandated GHG reduction targets for 2020 and set the university on the path to achieving B.C.&rsquo;s 2050 reduction target. A Biomass Future While many campus biomass district heating projects are up and running, projects like Goddard&rsquo;s and SFU&rsquo;s are not far behind. Meanwhile, some universities are taking notes and just beginning to add biomass to their lists of options. At Oregon State University&rsquo;s Cascades branch campus in central Oregon, a $193,910 grant was recently awarded by the USDA Forest Service&rsquo;s Wood Innovation grant program to determine the technology and space requirements of a campus-scale biomass thermal energy system. OSU-Cascades will contribute $67,869 in matching funds toward the grant. A preliminary study already showed that a proposed woody biomass system would be technically feasible and economically viable. What sets this project apart from the others is that OSU Cascades is still being developed, and is considering biomass in the early stages. According to Jane Barker, OSU-Cascades senior project manager, this branch campus of the OSU institution started in the fall of 2001 in leased facilities on the local Central Orego Community College campus. In 2012, the decision was made to have an expanded presence in central Oregon, so they are moving to a four-year university from a two-year graduate degree granting institution.&nbsp; There was a process by which they evaluated how much land they would need to potentially purchase to support a 5,000-student campus, Barker says, which determined between 45 and 65 acres would be needed. She says biomass came up as a mutually beneficial opportunity to heat the new campus. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in a location very close to natural forest lands that have a tremendous amount of biofuel currently being gathered and flash burned to prevent fire hazards, and we were looking for a renewable resource to use at the campus that would support that,&rdquo; Barker explains. Currently, OSU Cascades is going through long-range development planning, according to Barker. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking at building the layout, how to phase in a system, where it would be located,&rdquo; she shares. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be looking at wrapping up that phase by the end of the year, so over the next four or five months we&rsquo;ll be finalizing our understanding of how we&rsquo;re phasing the job in&mdash;when would that central utility plant go into place, what would be the energy source for it, how would it be sized, and so on.&rdquo; Despite the often multiyear development time-frame required of university biomass district heating projects, what makes installations like these viable at OSU-Cascades and other institutions of higher education is ample access to local biomass, sustainable- and environmental-minded academic programming and goals, as well as a long-term view on the overall economic and environmental wellbeing of the campus and student body that inhabits it. &ldquo;I think institutions of higher education are in a particularly good position to lead by example,&rdquo; Kenny says. &ldquo;When we take steps that are environmentally and sustainability orientated in this way, we are leading and hopefully sending a message to the next generation of leaders that there are ways to do things outside of what they think of as their norm as they experience the world.&rdquo; Author: Katie Fletcher Associate Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4920 kfletcher@bbiinternational.com

Bringing in Biomass: An inclined fuel handling belt feeds the University of Maine at Farmingtonâ€™s biomass boiler with about 4,000 tons of locally sourced hardwood chips during each heating season. 

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Biomass Frontrunner: The central biomass energy plant at the University of Maine at Farmington was a design-build project with energy service contractor Trane. It went through a couple iterations, including the possibility of implementing natural gas

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Readying the Replacement: The 500-horsepower Messersmith biomass boiler installed at the University of Maine at Farmington was assembled prior to the construction of the plant walls. The central heating unit will replace 95 percent of the roughly 390

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As college and university fossil fuel heating plants age and become inefficient, many are evaluating, building or have already installed biomass systems.

Passing the Test

Residential wood heat in the U.S. is plagued by the same problems as Europe and scores of other cold countries: most stoves are old, obsolete and put out too much smoke.&nbsp; As a result, wood heating elicits a mix of appreciation, ambivalence and antipathy. Those who use it the most invariably love it. Those who use it the least, and often live in more urbanized areas, think it&rsquo;s antiquated and polluting. One of the main solutions has been to incentivize the replacement of older, more polluting stoves.&nbsp; The longevity of most stoves is a blessing and a curse. Unlike cars, refrigerators and HVAC equipment, and many other appliances, people keep and use their stoves far beyond their ideal retirement age.&nbsp; Eventually, turnover occurs.&nbsp; Every year, thousands or even tens of thousands of stoves are retired naturally. Some of the owners buy new ones, or switch to pellet stoves. And many old stoves retire when their owner passes. But natural turnover is not happening fast enough. Stove changeout programs almost always rely on local, state or federal funding to subsidize the removal of old stoves and the installation of newer ones (or nonwood heating appliances). The goal is not only to reduce wood smoke pollution in a town or airshed, but also in the immediate neighborhood and inside the home. These programs are often compared to Cash for Clunkers, a $5 billion dollar federal program providing $4,500 vouchers for people who replaced their 18 miles-per-gallon or less cars with one that got at least 10 mpg more.&nbsp; Some in Congress argued that a $4,500 voucher was too generous, and introduced a bill that only gave $2,500 for an exchange netting 7 mpg and $4,500 for one netting 13 mpg. The same debate surrounds each stove change out program: How much benefit should be required per dollar of the rebate? And how do you define the benefits and ensure they are real? One unintended consequence of Cash for Clunkers, covered extensively in the media, was that most of the old cars turned in were American, and most of the new ones purchased were foreign. This phenomenon has not happened with stove change outs, but there are other unintended consequences. In retrospect, Cash for Clunkers was generally considered far too expensive for the benefits it provided. With changeout programs, jurisdictions are steadily changing the rules to ensure that the air quality benefits match the funding. The Alliance for Green Heat is analyzing all existing changeout programs, interviewing program managers and exploring the cost-benefit calculations that may take root in coming years. Increasingly, jurisdictions undertaking stove changeouts only want to replace older wood stoves with gas or electric appliances because they believe new wood stoves and even pellet stoves can still emit too much smoke. In areas facing the worst air pollution, public funding is going to help homes switch from renewable fuel to fossil fuel.&nbsp; The core problem is that areas that need to undertake wood stove changeouts have some of the worst air pollution in the country. The agencies running the program have one mandate: lower particulate matter in the air.&nbsp; They see this as a public health imperative that benefits everyone. The Bay Area of California recently launched a $3 million program, which is possibly the largest changeout ever. On the first day, more than 2,000 people applied and the program had to be closed to new applications due to lack of funds. Some in the industry warned that this program would not be popular because it did not allow wood stove replacements (only gas and electric). They were wrong. Like Cash for Clunkers, the program was so popular that it only met a small part of the demand. More homes could have been served with more air quality benefits if the rebates were smaller. Changeouts can be very effective in small geographic areas, such as mountain valley towns that experience frequent inversions. But on a state or even large county level, wood smoke PM reductions can be hard to measure and verify, even after removing thousands of wood stoves, because only a tiny percentage of stoves replaced get replaced.&nbsp; Ultimately, the $5 billion spent on Cash for Clunkers was just a drop in the bucket since there are hundreds of millions of cars on the road. The same goes with the $3 million that the Bay Area is spending, but it&rsquo;s a start. Moving forward, the questions remain: How to design a stove change out program that delivers the biggest bang for the buck? Can we show enough benefit to warrant increased funding? And potentially the biggest question of all: When will the federal government step in with matching funding? Author: John Ackerly President, Alliance for Green Heat jackerly@forgreenheat.org 301-204-9562

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Residential wood heat in the U.S. is plagued by the same problems as Europe and scores of other cold countries: most stoves are old, obsolete and put out too much smoke. 

October 2016

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Biomass Policy: States Doing Their Part

On Campus

Do Wood Stove Changeouts Work?

Featured

Molding the Bulk Market

Passing the Test

Contributions

Distributed Biogas: $11.8 Billion Market Hidden in Plain Sight

October 2016.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

Biomass Policy: States Doing Their Part

On Campus

Do Wood Stove Changeouts Work?

Featured

Molding the Bulk Market

Passing the Test

Contributions

Distributed Biogas: $11.8 Billion Market Hidden in Plain Sight

October 2016