Australia&rsquo;s bioenergy sector is alive and brimming with ideas about how to keep pace with progress being made internationally. However, biofuels advocates believe the country lacks a clear strategy, as well as policies to harness the environmental benefits and economic potential that biomass energy offers. &ldquo;In contrast to the U.S. and Brazil, where supportive policy environments have led to sustained growth in biofuels production and consumption over the past several decades, the biofuels industry in Australia has not developed to the same extent,&rdquo; states a paper issued earlier this year by the Queensland University of Technology, titled &ldquo;Biofuels to bioproducts: a growth industry for Australia.&rdquo; Heather Bone, director of Bioenergy Australia, which represents the country&rsquo;s bioenergy industry, recently told the Sydney Morning Herald, "Biofuels have been the forgotten renewable, it has been the ignored cousin of solar and wind. The past 10 to 15 years, the industry in Australia has suffered from a lack of supportive policies or frameworks and risks emerged from policies that flip-flopped, and moving goalposts." One bioenergy project that has attracted support from the state government in Queensland and potential funding through the Australia Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), is the Burdekin BioFutures Project, backed by the Inkerman Canegrowers Organization Ltd. A preliminary feasibility study for the proposed plant has been completed. The plant is expected to produce 140,000 metric tons (MT) per year of pellets made from the tops and trash of sugarcane grown in the Burdekin Shire of the Inkerman District of North Queensland in northeastern Australia. The district produces about 1.7 million MT of sugar cane annually. The plan is to harvest the sugarcane waste products&mdash;normally burned prior to harvest&mdash;and turn them into pellets. But the pellets will likely be exported to Japan, where they&rsquo;ll be used to generate electrical energy, not used in Australia. &ldquo;The outlook for bioenergy in Australia is relatively limited with respect to electricity generation,&rdquo; says Stewart Peters, Burdekin project manager. &ldquo;There has been very little progressive support for the sector at a regulatory level, due to Green activism and their concerns regarding potential utilization of native forest residues.&rdquo;&nbsp; From Trash to Treasure Peters believes the Burdekin plant offers Australia a number of clear benefits. &ldquo;It is a very environmentally sustainable project, immediately reducing carbon dioxide generation&mdash;even compared to forest-based wood pellets, which require 50 to 100 years for trees to regrow,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;In addition, it delivers substantial social outcomes in respect of jobs and elimination of extremely high levels of black ash&mdash;known locally as &lsquo;Burdekin snow,&rsquo; which drops from the sky across large areas including population centers. The project creates a pathway for delivering academic research and development&mdash;the breeding of biochemicals such as high poly hydroxy butyrate into sugar cane leaf.&rdquo; Peters says sufficient sugarcane is grown and burned prior to harvesting, to enable production of around 1 million MT of pellets annually. &ldquo;Imported biomass into Japan is projected to grow beyond 10 million tons per year as a consequence of environmental laws providing a 20-year, guaranteed feed-in tariff of around $280 per megawatt-hour,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;Emissions reduction and renewable energy generation is increasingly being mandated by governments seeking to meet their treaty commitments to lower carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.&rdquo; To Peters, it&rsquo;s a question of whether Australia will take its lead in the development of cane farming and milling technology a step further by using the cane tops and trash as a large-scale biomass resource. &ldquo;The Burdekin is uniquely positioned to supply 750,000 equivalent dry tons of tops and trash to a potential biomass project,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;This approach delivers additional value for the grower and processor. Sugarcane is a world-class biochemical platform that can just get better and better when the whole plant is utilized.&rdquo; Australia&rsquo;s Forest Resource In the southwestern region of the country in Fremantle, Plantation Energy Australia operates a wood pellet manufacturing company that uses a feedstock of noncommercial timber and harvest residues from sustainably managed timber plantations. The plant has two production trains that can produce 125,000 MT of pellets a year. It&rsquo;s currently operating at 50 percent capacity. However, production is expected to ramp up over the next 12 months to meet a growing demand. &ldquo;The primary object of the project is to have a sustainable business that supports local jobs, creates certified renewable energy in a solid form that can be transported to regional markets and creates value for the shareholders of the business,&rdquo; says Richard Allen, PEA managing director. &ldquo;The business supports around 50 jobs, both directly and indirectly and, in a regional context, that is a significant contribution to the local economy.&rdquo; The company currently exports its wood pellets to Belgium, but according to Allen, Japan and Korea are potential future markets because of their proximity. As he explains, there are two large forest plantation areas in Australia, which include the southern area in the west and the &ldquo;Green Triangle&rdquo; located between Victoria and southern and southeastern Australia. Radiata pine is grown and used for structural timbers. Eucalyptus globulus was originally planted for pulp wood, but is also used by PEA for wood pellets. &ldquo;As paper demand has fallen, the use of these plantations for energy has become more important and new demand out of Korea and Japan will drive the expansion of the plantation estate going forward,&rdquo; Allen says. Like Peters, Allen expects opportunities for biofuel pellets within Australia to remain limited. &ldquo;Australia is a large coal-fired power generator, but there is no cofiring in the country, primarily due to political pressure from the Greens, who are afraid the fuel will be derived from old growth forests, and from the unions, who are looking to protect the jobs of coal miners,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The domestic heating market is also small, with limited uptake of heaters in the southern states where winter temperatures require home heating and office heating.&rdquo; Expanding Internationally Altus Renewables, based in Loganholme, Queensland, specializes in the production and marketing of biomass-based fuels to generate renewable energy. Its fiber processing facility in Tuan can produce 125,000 MT of wood pellets annually. The pellets are exported to markets in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Korea and Japan for heating and cofiring in electrical generating plants. Ian Sandeman, who&rsquo;s been managing director and CEO of the company since 2007, says, &ldquo;Australia has a long way to go before we make any real progress in reach our bioenergy potential. As wood pellet producers, we are completely dependent on the international markets, as there are no domestic bioenergy markets for our pellets.&rdquo; Altus Renewables is planning a project for the Mount Gambier region in southern Australia, a 500,000-metric-ton-per-year plant that will export wood pellets from the Port of Portland in Victoria to serve European and Asian markets. &ldquo;We have recently completed our preliminary feasibility studies, and will look to get the formal feasibility study underway in the next couple of months,&rdquo; Sandeman says. &ldquo;If all things go according to plan. a final investment decision could be made by the end of the year. Once the formal feasibility study is completed and, assuming a positive result, the plant will take approximately 24 to 30 months to be constructed.&rdquo; Whether the proposed Mount Gambier plant will receive any government support remains to be seen. &ldquo;South Australia had a change of government two weeks ago, but we assume that the incoming government will be as supportive of the project as the outgoing one,&rdquo; Sandeman noted in early April. &ldquo;At this stage, we are trying to determine whether the new government will be willing to provide any assistance to the project.&rdquo; Which Future? The QUT bioenergy paper stresses that Australia is well-positioned to benefit from the growth of biobased fuel and chemical sector because of large amounts of biomass available in the country. It cites a recent study showing that the total annual amount of biomass potentially available from all feedstocks in Australia is 78 million tons, which is forecast to increase to nearly 100 million MT in 2030 and 114 million MT, in 2050. &ldquo;Given the investment and policy momentum in other countries, biofuels and biproduct industries will develop in Australia only with the creation of an enabling environment,&rdquo; the paper says. To get there, QUT recommends a five-point plan&mdash;a plan that quickly gained the support of Bioenergy Australia. The university&rsquo;s recommendations are to: &bull; Develop a national biofuels, bio-based products and bioeconomy strategy. &bull; Implement a national biofuels mandate supporting the introduction of higher quality fuels. &bull; Provide supporting mechanisms&mdash;education, incentives and infrastructure. &bull; Establish policy frameworks to grow new industries&mdash;advanced and drop-in biofuels, biochemicals and biobased products &bull; Support commercial developments through industry and research collaboration. &ldquo;The development of a vibrant bioeconomy in Australia offers a significant economic growth opportunity that will assist to diversify Australia&rsquo;s economy and create regional and rural jobs. It is critical that Australia act now to capture this opportunity,&rdquo; the QUT paper concludes. In short, it&rsquo;s a question of whether Australia will mostly continue to use the country&rsquo;s bioenergy potential to serve international markets or capitalize on the environmental and economic benefits of its homegrown biomass products. Author: Patrick C. Miller Staff Writer, Biomass Magazine pmiller@bbiinternational.com

Altus Renewables manufactures about 125,000 metric tons of wood pellets annually from a processing facility in Tuan along the east coast of Australia. The company plans to build a 500,000-MT wood pellet plant at Mount Gambier in southeastern Australi

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The proposed Burdekin BioFutures Project in northeastern Australia would use sugarcane tops and trash to produce 140,000 MT of pellets annually. Currently, these parts of the sugarcane crop are burned prior to harvest.

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Because of the expanding market for wood pellets in Japan and Korea, Plantation Energy Australia says it will double the production of its plant in Fremantle, Australia. The company currently exports its pellet production to Belgium.

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Will Australia use bioenergy to its full potential, or primarily serve export markets? 

Building Out Biomass in the Land Down Under

Bubser joins SCS Global Services SCS Global Services announced that Dave Bubser, a world-renowned forest resource management and certification expert, has joined the company as its new vice president of forestry services. Bubser now oversees international business for SCS forest-based certification programs in the company&rsquo;s natural resources division, providing strategic and operational guidance and support to program directors, and focusing on client relations, sales and marketing, auditing key accounts, and special projects.&nbsp; Prior to joining SCS, Bubser spent 17 years with the Rainforest Alliance, most recently overseeing all certification and assurance activities in the U.S. and Canada, as well as global carbon verification services. Rockwell invests in Ecoremedy technology Rockwell Venture Capital recently announced an asset purchase of Ecoremedy, an innovative waste conversion technology that repurposes problematic municipal, agricultural and industrial byproducts into renewable energy and recovered nutrients while reducing carbon footprint, waste management risk and operating costs.&nbsp; The Rockwell investment provides the newly formed company, Ecoremedy LLC, with the capital to penetrate the waste disposal market through a disruptive, managed-cost financial model serving industries and municipalities plagued by unpredictable and unstable waste disposal costs. Rockwell Venture Capital, a longstanding Pittsburgh-based firm with investments in technology-based engineering products, renewable energy production, and conservation initiatives, brings their financial and management strength to support Ecoremedy&rsquo;s growth. Audi, Global Energies partnership reaches key milestone Global Bioenergies and German carmaker Audi have announced that a key milestone was reached in their multiyear agreement. Using its Leuna Demo plant, Global Bioenergies produced high-purity renewable isobutene that was further converted by the Fraunhofer Institute into high-performance gasoline additives including isooctane, ETBE and isododecane. These e-fuels&nbsp; were shipped to Audi, to be used in engine testing, in complement to those already performed by Global Bioenergies. Currently, a small part of Global Bioenergies&rsquo; ton-scale isobutene production is directed toward e-fuels, using Fraunhofer&rsquo;s lab-scale conversion unit. From the e-fuel produced, a batch of 60 liters was delivered to Audi. The e-fuel production capacity will be significantly increased in 2019, with the addition to the Leuna Demo plant of a dedicated fuel production unit, which will allow the production of renewable gasoline batches. Wood chip heating fuel quality standard approved in the US A new quality standard for wood chip heating fuel is now available. The American National Standards Institute recently approved AD17225-4 Wood Chip Heating Fuel Quality Standard, which is a revised version of the international standard ISO 17225-4. The standard development project was coordinated by the Biomass Energy Resource Center, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, the Biomass Thermal Energy Council, and Innovative Natural Resource Solutions LLC.&nbsp; Funding for the project was provided by the USDA Forest Service. Biomass Power Association welcomes 5 new members The Biomass Power Association recently announced several new members&mdash;Granite Shore Power, Veolia, Jamestown Energy, Koda Energy and Forest2Market. Granite Shore Power is the owner of the 155-MW power facility Schiller Station in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which has a 50-MW biomass unit that operates as a baseload unit, and two coal or fuel-oil fired units that are used as peaking resources. Veolia is a multinational firm with expertise in energy operations, technology and engineering, with a mission to help customers address environmental and sustainability challenges in energy, water and waste. Biomass plays a big role in sustainability for Veolia, which owns and operates facilities around the world.&nbsp;&nbsp; Koda Energy is a 23.4-MW biomass heat and power plant in Shakopee, Minnesota, utilizing organic fuels including wood chips, saw dust, municipal tree trimmings, ground pallets, oat hulls, wheat and sunflower screenings, and other forestry and agriculture waste. &nbsp;Jamestown Energy is part owner of Pacific Ultrapower Chinese Station. The 19.8-MW facility, located close to the community of Chinese Camp near California&rsquo;s Stanislaus National Forest, utilizes wood fuel from forest management operations, urban construction and demolition wood, and agricultural products such as nutshells and orchard prunings. &nbsp;Forest2Market, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, delivers project development and operational support to new and existing biopower projects by providing fuel supply diligence utilizing proprietary market data. Green Investment Group invests in Dublin Waste-to-Energy Covanta Holding Corp. announced that the Green Investment Group Ltd. has closed on its investment in the Dublin waste-to-energy project. As an initial step of the joint venture, announced on Dec. 18, GIG agreed to invest &euro;136 million for a 50 percent equity stake in the project. Covanta retains ownership of the remaining 50 percent of the project, and will continue to operate and maintain the Dublin facility. Covanta initially expects to use the proceeds from the transaction to reduce outstanding debt. As projects in the joint venture&rsquo;s combined U.K. development pipeline move to construction, the funds will be available to meet Covanta&rsquo;s portion of project equity obligations.

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Business Briefs

At ABFA, we&rsquo;ve been keeping our eyes on the U.S. EPA during the first quarter of 2018. The EPA&rsquo;s actions over the next several months will have ripple effects through the industry, in the RIN markets, and on Capitol Hill. As such, I think it appropriate to lay out the challenges ahead. First and foremost, EPA has been party to a number of top-level political meetings at the White House, engaging with individual companies to discuss options for a politically driven compromise deal between corn ethanol and the merchant refining industry. During these meetings, Administrator Scott Pruitt publically called to cap the conventional pool D6 RIN value to address the alleged issues with the program&rsquo;s compliance costs, a move that would seemingly reverse the current EPA&rsquo;s own logic as spelled out in its defense for the rejection of the petitions to change the point of obligation under the RFS. I find this especially ironic, as this was one of the few things Pruitt and I ostensibly agreed upon on last year. This rejection stated the following: &ldquo;Less obviously apparent, however, is the impact of the RFS program on the market price for the petroleum blendstocks that merchant refiners sell. In addition&hellip; all refiners and importers of gasoline and diesel fuel incur costs to comply with RFS obligations. This is true whether the refiners and importers acquire renewable identification numbers (RINs) by blending renewable fuels or purchasing separated RINs&mdash;meaning no fundamental inequity exists. Moreover, because all refiners and importers have RFS obligations in proportion to the fuels they produce or import, they all have similar costs of compliance related to the RFS program, and they all seek to recover those costs through the pricing of their product. Stated another way: Merchant refiners can indeed expend significant funds to purchase RINs needed to demonstrate compliance with the RFS program, but the cost is offset by a corresponding increase in the price of the fuel they sell. That market price reflects the cost of RINs. The same dynamic applies to both merchant and integrated refiners.&rdquo; Second, EPA is working twofold to eliminate any obligation small refiners might otherwise have under the RFS program, by granting additional waivers, and by seeking to expand the definition of &ldquo;small refinery.&rdquo; As these small refiners produce almost 10 percent of the gasoline and diesel sold in the U.S., both of these actions will further undercut the RFS program. We must demand that EPA make these decisions with absolute transparency, clearly justifying for whom, and on what criteria, these decisions are made. Indeed, let&rsquo;s not forget the regulatory role EPA plays. In 2018, EPA has so far silent on approving new pathways and issuing new rules, such as a regulatory framework for biointermediates. We will need to continue fighting to ensure EPA does its job in this space, enabling growth in the program. And, finally, given this EPA&rsquo;s lackluster support for the RFS so far, it would be foolish to expect the 2019 renewable volume obligations (RVOs) to recognize growth in the renewable fuels industry. As with last year, we should expect the need to fight for growth in the D4 pool RVO. Last year, the proposed 2018 RVOs included lower volumes than actual production in 2017; the same could be true in this year&rsquo;s proposed RVOs. We encourage everyone to begin preparing to file strong public comments in the event a disappointing proposal is issued. Outside the walls of EPA, we can expect to see Capitol Hill actively working to legislatively reform the RFS program this year. In particular, Sen. John Cornyn has been working to find a reasonable middle ground between parties affected by the RFS. This middle ground will hopefully provide certainty for the industry, and I encourage you to stay tuned on that effort. The fight ahead of us for 2018 is, at this point, well-defined. To achieve the vision that the 2007 RFS program set out to enact&mdash;a future for advanced and cellulosic fuels&mdash;we must work together to prevail this year. As always, your engagement in Washington is important. And at the turning point we seemed to have reached, it is more essential than ever. Contact: Michael McAdams President, Advanced Biofuels Association Michael.mcadams@hklaw.com www.advancedbiofuelsassociation.com

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The fight ahead of us for 2018 is, at this point, well-defined. To achieve the vision that the 2007 RFS program set out to enact—a future for advanced and cellulosic fuels—we must work together to prevail this year. 

US EPA Climate  Changing on RFS? 

An X-Prize design challenge with a $5 million dollar purse would get plenty of attention in the stove world. But would it transform the market? New technology needs to be in demand for innovation to be successful. Since the 1950s, there have been three major technology advances in wood heating: the first was effective catalytic and noncatalytic secondary combustion in wood stoves that emerged after the 1988 U.S. EPA emission regulations; the second was the invention and development of the pellet stove that began in the late 1980s and &lsquo;90s. The third is the development of very advanced, automated wood and pellet central heating systems that emerged in Europe, and entered the U.S. market in the past 15 years. We think the next evolution in wood and pellet stoves is more advanced automation that lets computers improve convenience, maximize efficiency and minimize emissions, just like they do in our cars, and virtually every other modern combustion appliance. One key component is the lower cost oxygen or &ldquo;lambda&rdquo; sensors that measure oxygen in the flue gases, and can adjust the air controls according to the precise characteristics of the fuel in the appliance that day. We need the same innovation and automation that is making homes and appliances smarter and more convenient.&nbsp; A good comparison is some of the basic communications we get from our car: bell tells us when we haven&rsquo;t put on our seat belt, an indicator light turns warns us when our tire pressure is low, when we forget to turn off the head headlights or when the oil gets dangerously low. These communications improve the safety and usability of the technology, and protect our investment from being damaged. A bell alerting us to a potential chimney fire would be like the light on the dashboard of car that signals the oil is dangerously low. A light signaling the need to clean parts of your pellet stove would be like the low tire pressure signal from your car.&nbsp; But until manufacturers start adding things like this, consumers won&rsquo;t know the potential exists&mdash;and older consumers are likely to resist the idea at first. However, if people see that automation works, improves efficiency and helps extend the life of appliances, there is good chance these features will be embraced. Consider this: &ldquo;Time-of-day&rdquo; electricity pricing could open up major opportunities to save money with wood or pellet heat. For instance, homes with both heat pumps and a wood or pellet stove could use heat pumps when electricity is cheaper (typically at night), and use their wood or pellet stove during the more expensive peak hours. A smart home could automatically shift from electric to pellet heating throughout the day as prices shift. Another major innovation would be electricity generation. Would you be interested in a wood stove that could recharge your tablet or cell phone, and power the lights in your home? In five years, there may even be a wood or pellet stove or boiler that affordably generate half as much electricity as residential solar panels during winter months in the northern parts of the North America and Europe. The X-Prize would be happy to host a next-generation wood stove competition, but it requires outside groups to put up the prize money.&nbsp; If you don&rsquo;t come from a sector that has companies, foundations or governments willing and able to sponsor an X-Prize, then it doesn&rsquo;t happen. Needless to say, we do not have $5 million to use the X-Prize platform.&nbsp; Luckily, many in the renewable wood heat community are mission-driven, and will compete on the National Mall mostly for bragging rights. And one or more of them may transform the market.&nbsp; Our strategy is to hold that wood stove design competition ourselves, and see if we can galvanize enough creative talent to help reinvent one of the oldest technologies on the planet: the fire that keeps people warm in winter.&nbsp; How clean can it get? How might new technologies transform the industry, and how will government agencies respond if we can show that stoves can be consistently clean and efficient in the hands of consumers, at a reasonable price?&nbsp; The 12 stoves on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Nov. 9-13, will hold some of those answers. Author: John Ackerly President, Alliance for Green Heat jackerly@forgreenheat.org 301-204-9562

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An X-Prize design challenge with a $5 million dollar purse would get plenty of attention in the stove world. But would it transform the market? New technology needs to be in demand for innovation to be successful. 

A $5 Million X-Prize to Reinvent the Wood Stove

The evidence is clear: Demand for forest products&mdash;including wood pellets, wood chips and other renewable wood resources used to generate energy&mdash;is associated with more, not less, productive forests. A 2017 report by Forest2Market unequivocally illustrates that demand from the forest products industry has not resulted in dramatic losses to timberlands in the U.S. South, the most productive wood basket in the world. Rather, it has encouraged landowners to invest in productivity improvements that dramatically increased the total amount of wood fiber in the South&rsquo;s forests. Forest2Market&rsquo;s independent statistical analyses show that increased demand in the South since the early 1950s is associated with more acres, better growth and larger inventories. The rise of the export pellet market over the past decade has caused some to question the impact that pellet mills are having on forest inventory. However, as data from a previous (2015) Forest2Market study on wood supply in the U.S. South shows, pulpwood harvests for export facilities are but a small fraction of overall harvests when compared to harvests for nonpellet facilities, and claims that this impact is disastrous are largely exaggerated. Historical Perspective Since the middle of the 20th century, the amount of timberland&mdash;unreserved, productive forest land&mdash;in the U.S. South has remained stable, increasing by about 3 percent between 1953 and 2015. During this period, economic growth and increased construction spurred consumer demand for forest products, which drove an increase in timber harvests (removals) of 57 percent. During this same period, the amount of wood fiber (inventory) stored in southern forests increased by 108 percent. During the latter half of the 20th century, demand for forest products expanded significantly as the U.S. population and gross domestic product (GDP) increased. Americans built more and larger homes, and until the dawn of the digital era in the 1990s and 2000s, consumed more and more paper to conduct their business and supply their homes. All of this fueled demand for timber to make the many forest products Americans use daily and, as a result, timber removals nearly doubled from 5.5 billion cubic feet in 1953 to a peak of 10.2 billion cubic feet in 1996. Around the turn of the new millennium, technological improvements reduced demand for printing and writing papers, and increasing imports reduced demand for domestically-produced lumber and panels. The housing bubble of the mid-2000s buoyed domestic lumber and panel production until the Great Recession dramatically reduced housing starts and demand for these products. Today, timber removals in the U.S. South, which have recovered due to improving housing markets, increased demand for personal hygiene and packaging products, and new demand from global bioenergy markets, are still below their 1990s peak, but they are 57 percent higher than they were in 1953&mdash;due largely to increased removals from private softwood stands. Forest Management Improvements Detailed research over the past 50 years, which was conducted in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, university forestry departments, state agencies and industry partners, has resulted in fact-based improvements to forest management practices, including site preparation, fertilization, weed control and thinning. These efforts have also enhanced the quality and survival of seedlings. The result of these improvements has been an astounding nearly fourfold increase in the amount of growth achievable for seedlings established in the 2000s, compared to seedlings established in the 1950s. Largely because of the implementation of these practices on privately-owned lands, total annual timberland growth in the U.S. South increased 112 percent between 1953 and 2015, and growth exceeded removals by 38 percent on average. Healthy demand has made it easy for corporate and family landowners to take a long-term view, investing in more expensive management practices up front for greater returns in the future. Most importantly, stable demand from the forest products industry helps protect forestland from its greatest, irreversible threat: urbanization. Healthy Demand Mitigates Forest Loss As with the total area of southern timberland, the total amount of forest land in the U.S. has been stable in recent years, according to USDA data. However, while total acreage has remained stable, U.S. forests have not been impervious to change. National land cover/use data shows that approximately 36 million acres of forestland converted to other land cover and use types between 1982 and 2012. Of these converted acres, 17.7 million acres (49 percent) were lost to development&mdash;more than any other single land cover/use type. While forest land converted to other uses, other land use types also converted to forest, resulting in a 0.7 percent net increase in forest acres. However, of the 39 million acres of land that converted to forest during this same period, only 0.5 million acres, or 1.2 percent, were previously developed; most were previously pasture or cropland. This data shows that developed land uses, which expanded by 58.7 percent between 1982 and 2012, place undeniable pressure on forests. Further, once developed, land rarely ever reverts back to forests. Urbanization, not the production of forest products, is the single biggest threat facing forests today. While landowners harvest timber from their lands, they typically also regenerate that timber and keep forests forested, especially if they can find readily accessible, healthy markets for their timber. Demand from the global forest products industry helps protect forests in the U.S. South. For example, planted stands, which are some of the most productive, have been the least likely to succumb to the pressures of conversion. Between 1989 and 1999&mdash;the only period available for this kind of analysis&mdash;5.4 million acres of stocked timberlands in the U.S. South were converted to nonforest uses. Of these lost acres, the overwhelming majority (94 percent) were naturally regenerated forests, not planted stands. Not only does demand for forest products increase the productivity of forests and provide an incentive for landowners to continue growing trees, it also helps counter factors like urbanization and development, which permanently destroy forests. The Future of Forests While timberlands in the U.S. South have been stable to increasing since the 1950s, the pressures of urbanization are projected to result in forest loss over the coming decades. However, healthy markets for wood products are expected to mitigate, not exacerbate, these losses. High demand encourages producers to increase, not decrease, their supply of timber in the forest. As Forest2Market&rsquo;s comprehensive analysis illustrates, strong demand for forest products incentivizes landowners to maintain their timberlands, and invest in forest productivity in order to increase supply, which has resulted in more wood growing in U.S. South forests. The future of forests depends on healthy demand for forest products. This demand is vital for keeping forested lands forested and for diminishing the threat of urbanization. Author: Hannah Jeffries Timber and Fiber Market Analyst, Forest2Market Inc. hannah.jefferies@forest2market.com. 980-233-4036

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The evidence is clear: Demand for forest products—including wood pellets, wood chips and other renewable wood resources used to generate energy—is associated with more, not less, productive forests. 

Healthy Demand for Southern Timber Ensures Forested Lands Remain Forested

Asticom Kenya Ltd. team leaders peer out at an informal settlement of Kibera, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, described as Africaâ€™s largest urban slum. The company plans to build a 10-MW waste-to-energy power plant using municipal solid waste.

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In sub-Saharan Africa, women are largely
responsible for 
agricultural harvesting and providing energy provisions to the 
household. Here, women haul firewood home in Kibera, outside of Nairobi, Kenya, described as the largest urban slum in Africa.  

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Uncollected waste blocks drainage and poses serious health risks in Kenya, particularly in informal 
settlements such as this one in Kibera outside of Nairobi.

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The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa, a multidonor fund administered by the African Development Bank Group, is making headway in effecting real socioeconomic change in sub-Saharan Africa—and biomass power is an integral component.  

From  Impoverished  to  Empowered

Tell us about the inception of the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas, its mission and vision. The Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas (&lsquo;RNG Coalition&rsquo; for short) serves as the public policy advocate and education platform for the renewable natural Gas industry in North America. In 2011, co-founders Johannes Escudero and David Cox were working in respective roles in and around the California state legislature. They came across a small clean energy industry with enormous potential that was being unintentionally impeded from growth in a market that was in need of more renewable fuel solutions. In California, methane gas (biogas) captured at landfills was being used to generate electricity on-site, but not used as natural gas vehicle fuel, due to a 1988 state law that effectively squashed the fuel industry. The law essentially made it impossible to put California&rsquo;s renewable natural gas into the interstate pipeline system, then draw it out of the pipe to power vehicles with ultra-clean renewable fuel. That needed to change. Together, with eight visionary companies that had the foresight to see that the U.S. lagged behind Europe in utilizing organic waste streams for its potential as renewable energy and fuel, Cox and Escudero launched the RNG Coalition. Within months, we successfully corrected the 1988 law. The RNG Coalition&rsquo;s mission ever since has been to advocate for increased development, deployment and utilization of renewable natural gas so that present and future generations will have access to this domestic, renewable, clean fuel and energy supply. Your members are wide-ranging. Who are they? Members of the RNG Coalition encompass over 125 companies and organizations from the full spectrum of the renewable natural gas value chain. They include major gas utilities, waste haulers, project developers and operators, technology and equipment providers, renewable fuel distributers and retailers, and everything in between. They even include large and medium-sized universities and cities with a progressive approach to sustainability. Your major priority for 2017 stands in 2018. What is it? We filter our many advocacy and educational opportunities through the lens of our primary goal: to what extent an action will help the North American RNG industry double the number of RNG production facilities from 51 in 2015, to over 100 in less than 10 years. From the 1980s to 2014, fewer than 40 RNG production facilities arose in North America. We recently completed a new database and map of North American RNG production facilities, which revealed that less than four years later, we have just celebrated reaching 75 operational RNG facilities! The project also positively revealed that we&rsquo;re well on our way to exceeding that target. There are two dozen more projects currently being constructed, and another couple dozen more planned to be built in the next two years. You have an action plan in place, striving to make the aforementioned priority happen. Can you discuss the major initiatives in this plan, and how these objectives will help achieve your goal for the industry? First and foremost, we are dedicated to educating policymakers on how the RNG industry is a living, growing example of the benefit of clean fuels programs, since the intended design of these programs is to grow production and use of domestic renewable fuel. We collect relevant data and conduct research to enable the industry to communicate its economic benefits in terms of new clean energy jobs and investment into communities, and the associated environmental benefits our society has realized from RNG. We promote best practices specific to the industry, such as gas quality standards for pipeline injection. In this area, this year we&rsquo;ve launched RNG Academy. It&rsquo;s a continuing education program for gas utilities and LDCs to promote best practices and help industry employees better understand production, injection, and distribution of renewably sourced gas. We host important events, like the RNG Summit in Washington, D.C., for RNG company representatives to communicate to lawmakers the on-the-ground business realities and the benefits of what they do. The RNG Coalition puts on a growing end-of-year annual RNG conference for executive leaders to provide real-time updates on relevant policy and market developments, celebrate milestones and recalibrate for the work to be done in the coming year. And this year we&rsquo;ll host the first RNG Expo, to enable companies in our growing industry to showcase RNG-related technologies, capabilities, innovation and services. Describe the industry right now&mdash;what&rsquo;s production at now compared to five or 10 years ago, where is the fuel going, and how is it being used? We&rsquo;ve seen changes in the fuel&rsquo;s use over time, to reflect that the highest and best use now for RNG is as renewable transportation fuel. Prior to 2014, a majority of RNG was being used to generate renewable electricity, registered under many states&rsquo; renewable portfolio standards. But the economics where changing. Electricity prices had dropped and were struggling to continue spurring new production. Much of RNG production has shifted to conditioning and compressing or liquefying the gas to be used as a renewably sourced, drop-in natural gas transportation fuel. Now, 70 to 80 percent of RNG in North America is being used to power vehicles with natural gas engines, primarily heavy-duty vehicles like city fleets, port trucks and passenger buses in metro areas that most often previously ran on diesel. A major driver of growth in the U.S. has been the Renewable Fuel Standard. Can you talk about that and its influence? &nbsp;As electricity prices lagged, the Renewable Fuels Standard, or RFS, is one driver that helped stimulate new projects to assist the U.S. in efficiently using waste streams for RNG production. In 2014, thanks to the work of the RNG Coalition and industry to get recognition of RNG&rsquo;s full environmental life-cycle benefits were officially recognized by the EPA. RNG used as a drop-in natural gas transportation fuel is an RFS-qualified advanced and cellulosic biofuel. The importance of the net carbon savings achieved by using RNG in transportation, reflected by the value of the cellulosic (D3) RIN, became a better driver for new facility development and growth in RNG production. RNG production has made up over 95 percent of cellulosic fuel generation under the RFS in each year since. In 2014, about 50 million gallons (ethanol gallon equivalent or EGE) of RNG were produced under the RFS. In 2017, EPA shows over 242.5 million gallons (EGE) of RNG were RFS-qualified. That&rsquo;s an average annual growth rate of almost exactly 70 percent. What this means is, in the midst of a year when the merits of the RFS are being hotly debated in Washington, the RNG industry is perfect proof that the RFS is continuing to work as Congress intended, growing domestic production and use of cellulosic biofuels. What about Canada? What&rsquo;s the driving force there? In addition to transportation fuel programs, we are working with regional gas utilities to help establish and further goals to decarbonizing the gas distributed through their pipeline networks by way of RNG procurement commitments. Fortis BC and Union Gas, as examples, have goals in place to have RNG make up specific percentages of the natural gas distributed through their pipeline networks by target years in the 2020s and &rsquo;30s. In response, we&rsquo;re seeing several new RNG production facilities coming online in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Are there any other important policy issues or pieces to watch, aside from the RFS? California&rsquo;s Low Carbon Fuel Standard has played a similar role to that of the RFS, driving growth across the country and into Canada, of production of RNG to be used as renewable transportation fuel. Similar programs are being instated to encourage more production and use of RNG in respective regions. The California Air Resources Board is currently considering and taking public comment on potential amendments to the state&rsquo;s LCFS, including an end goal to extend the program to 2030. We&rsquo;re participating in a stakeholder process in Oregon, originating out of 2017 SB 334, that has the goal to identify and overcome barriers in the state to RNG production and utilization. A similar bill also passed in Washington early this year, designed to spur more biogas and RNG production and use in the state. Additionally, the RNG Coalition has two bills we&rsquo;re sponsoring in California this year, one of which is similar to the RNG set by the Canadian utilities. Working in collaboration with California&rsquo;s gas utilities, SB 1440, introduced by Sen. Ben Hueso, would establish a biomethane procurement program that requires gas corporations, Jan. 1, 2030, to procure their proportionate share of a total of 32 billion cubic feet of biomethane statewide. The second bill, AB 3187, introduced by Assemblymember Tim Grayson, would authorize gas corporations to include in their rate bases all reasonable costs incurred to interconnect biomass conversion facilities and anaerobic digestion facilities to their common carrier pipelines. Author: Anna Simet Editor, Biomass Magazine 701-738-4961 asimet@bbiinternational.com

The California city of Santa Monicaâ€™s famous Big Blue Bus public transportation fleet is fueled with 100 percent Redeem, RNG Coalition member Clean Energy Fuelsâ€™ renewable natural gas fuel (RNG). The city estimates an annual average use of 2 mill

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The Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas's Marcus Gillette discusses the organization, its goals and progress in expanding the production and use of RNG in North America. 

Rallying for RNG

As power prices have dropped consistently over the past decade, partly due to government renewable energy credits awarded lopsidedly to wind and solar, we have worked to ensure our members are capturing the many public benefits provided by biomass power. Aside from shoring up forest-based economies in many parts of the country, biomass can be credited with providing an incentive for healthy forest management, and with utilizing materials that need disposal. Yet, our members are only paid for the kilowatts of power they are able to put on the grid&mdash;a value that fails to adequately compensate biomass power facilities, and doesn't account for the carbon benefits of biomass. Two recent developments, by Congress and in the state of California, may provide some additional benefits.&nbsp; Earlier this year, Congress passed a much-hyped tax reform package. While the new tax brackets and corporate tax rates got the most media coverage, one provision in the bill could lead to drastic changes for some fuel-based energy technologies. The so-called 45Q provision establishes a tax credit per ton of carbon captured from power facilities. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, was geared toward helping fossil fuel power generating stations benefit from reducing their carbon emissions, but it has potentially significant implications for the biomass power sector. &nbsp;To be eligible for the credit, companies have to capture carbon dioxide produced from burning fuel, and then use it for a specified purpose: geological storage, enhanced oil recovery, or selling it commercially as a product, or a component of a product. The highest credit&mdash;up to $50 per ton&mdash;is awarded to companies that are able to store carbon dioxide geologically. The new law offers significant improvements over previous tax programs. The new program has an in-service date of 2026, and offers a 12-year stream of credits. This is in contrast to the previous 45Q, which was capped, and failed to offer any long-term certainty for investors in carbon capture. &nbsp;While Congress enacted 45Q, the California Air Resources Board is busy amending that state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. CARB's recently proposed amendment seeks to provide an enhanced carbon intensity score where alternative fuels, including power from biomass, deploy carbon capture and storage technology. Importantly, these same amendments also seek additional benefits for power producers, including biomass, where power is used as a fuel for electric vehicles. &nbsp;We are working with our members to look closely at carbon capture in the context of 45Q and the LCFS. We&rsquo;re also talking to coalitions and carbon capture advocates who can help us make sense of the new credit, and stay up-to-date on the new technology. &nbsp;To be sure, there are still a lot of questions and obstacles to overcome before biomass can take full advantage of 45Q. For starters, the technology for capturing carbon is still very expensive, and even the high end of the credit probably doesn&rsquo;t make carbon capture pencil out for biomass quite yet. But 45Q and changes to the LCFS could be an important next step in earning biomass power the compensation it deserves for providing long-recognized carbon benefits Author: Bob Cleaves President, Biomass Power Association bob@usabiomass.org www.usabiomass.org

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As power prices have dropped over the past decade, partly due to government renewable energy credits awarded lopsidedly to wind and solar, we have worked to ensure our members are capturing the many public benefits provided by biomass power.

Carbon Capture with Storage: A New Frontier for Biomass?

Recently, someone asked me what percent of U.S. energy is renewable, and I hesitated. I knew wood energy was somewhere around 2 percent&mdash;20 percent popped into my head. That was what I said, and later, I confirmed that estimate was high&mdash;it actually only accounts for about 10 percent of total U.S. energy consumption, and about 15 percent of electricity generation, according to the U.S. EIA. In Africa, wood is the source of a whopping 80 percent of all energy consumption, but mostly for heating and cooking. And on a continent home to 1.2 billion-plus people, only about 45 percent actually have access to electricity, and that number is even lower in the sub-Saharan region. In his powerful page-28 feature, &ldquo;From Impoverished to Empowered,&rdquo; Senior Editor Ron Kotrba reports on a New Deal on Energy for Africa, an initiative driven by the African Development Bank Group that, in a nut shell, aims to provide Africans universal access to electricity by 2025. Biomass will plan a significant role, and Ousseynou Nakoulima, AfBD&rsquo;s director of renewable energy, told Kotrba, &ldquo;Biomass&mdash;specifically agriculture residue&mdash;does not just provide a solution to the problems of energy access and renewable energy, but it drives business and the value chain all along the ag subsector. In nutshell, these are major advantages.&rdquo; Like Africa, Australia has an abundance of ag residue, sugarcane bagasse in particular. Staff Writer Patrick Miller details Australia&rsquo;s bioenergy development potential, progress and&nbsp; hindering political forces in his page-14 feature, &ldquo;Building Out Biomass in the Land Down Under.&rdquo; In the story, he details several large-scale pellet projects, and found a common theme while discussing them with developers&mdash;right now, the domestic market is limited, so eyes are on international markets for now. Rounding out our global market development issue, I interviewed the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas&rsquo;s Marcus Gillette on the North American RNG market, which has experienced significant growth over the past several years, one major driver of which has been the Renewable Fuel Standard.&nbsp; Since 2014, when RNG was qualified to generate cellulosic biofuel RINs under the RFS, the industry&rsquo;s average annual growth rate has been about 70 percent, Gillette says. He tells me, &ldquo;What this means is, in the midst of a year when the merits of the RFS are being hotly debated in Washington, the RNG industry is perfect proof that the RFS is continuing to work as Congress intended, growing domestic production and use of cellulosic biofuels.&rdquo; I write this ed note shortly before leaving for the International Biomass Conference &amp; Expo, and coming off this timely issue, I look forward to learning even more about the research, equipment and technology innovation, and development and advocacy strategies being deployed to advance the global bioenergy industry. Author: Anna Simet Editor asimet@bbiinternational.com

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The May/June issue of Biomass Magazine includes stories from around the globe, including a major effort to increase renewable electricity access Africa, and Australian bioenergy production, use and export.

The Varying Global Energy Landscape	

Some myths never seem to die. They morph from grains of truth in academic papers to slogans on bumper stickers, and then get debated by society for decades. In other instances, they&rsquo;re based in solid science, but then get pushed beyond their logical limit. The following are our top three on both sides of the debate about whether biomass should be used to heat homes and institutions. Myths Perpetuated by Wood Burners Humans are conditioned to some wood smoke. &ldquo;Humans have cooked and heated with wood for millennia. Why all the fuss now?&rdquo; True, but we only began living past the age of 30 about 30,000 years ago. And just 2,000 years ago, half of Romans who lived to the age of 15 died before they were 45. Along with modern plumbing and penicillin, one of the most important human health inventions was the chimney. Paired with a good stove, a good chimney can get close to 100 percent of smoke out of living space. People disliked wood smoke in their homes in colonial America as much as they dislike it today. And the health impacts of breathing wood smoke are still just as bad. It&rsquo;s carbon neutral. &ldquo;Trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, and if a tree is burned for fuel, another tree will replace it and reabsorb the carbon.&rdquo; The theory is sound, but in practice, it&rsquo;s much more complicated. The carbon impact of burning wood is on a spectrum from very good to very bad, all depending on how it&rsquo;s done. Few would argue that harvesting old-growth forest in ecologically sensitive areas in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania and national parks in Slovakia is carbon neutral. And few would argue that from a carbon perspective, using trees blown down by Hurricane Katrina to heat homes in the eastern U.S. is a far better use of carbon than using oil or gas. The impossible task is to find one average point on that spectrum that assigns a carbon footprint to using a ton of wood for energy. There are many points on the spectrum, and the sooner we recognize that, the better. Healthy forests are managed forests. &ldquo;There are a myriad of good reasons to manage a forest, especially as impacts of climate change make some forests far more vulnerable to catastrophic wild fires. Well-managed forests can provide many habitat and ecosystem benefits.&rdquo; That said, foresters can overstate their case, and be slow to acknowledge that &ldquo;management&rdquo; can be a guise for practices that aren&rsquo;t sustainable. Plantations harvested every 20 years do not recoup the ecological diversity and carbon sequestration that the original, natural forest had. Anti-Wood-Burning Activist Myths No amount of wood smoke is safe or justifiable. &ldquo;In this modern age where almost all of us have access to far cleaner fuels, heating homes with wood is not only a public health hazard, it&rsquo;s unethical and selfish. The huge volume of smoke that a single stove can emit in a neighborhood far outweighs any benefit of not using fossil fuel.&rdquo;&nbsp; We agree that stoves often produce excessive smoke and there&rsquo;s a need for improved technology, and better regulations and enforcement by public health departments. But when wood or pellet stoves or boilers produce barely any smoke detectable to the eye or the nose, you have to start the complex task of comparing small amounts of smoke to a wide range of negative impacts of oil, gas or electricity. We know we have a public health emergency from climate change that is the result of fossil fuels being too cheap and easy to use. At what point is it justifiable, as a society, to accept some negative consequences of other fuels? Wood emits more carbon than coal.&nbsp; &ldquo;Wood is the new coal,&rdquo; is a slogan that some activists are trying to promote.&nbsp; This myth gained traction in 2010, after the release of the Manomet study that had been commissioned by the State of Massachusetts.&nbsp; A newspaper ran the headline &ldquo;Biomass Worse Than Coal,&rdquo; but the majority of the report analyzed in detail when and why biomass was far better than coal. Basically, Manomet said it would take 40 years for the carbon to be reabsorbed if biomass replaced coal in electric plants. However, it clearly states that biomass &ldquo;lowers greenhouse gas levels compared to what would have been the case if fossil fuels had been used over the same period.&rdquo; This serves as a vivid reminder that regardless of what a report actually says, the headline chosen by editors can define the public memory of that report. We must eliminate combustion technology. &ldquo;Biomass is simply another smokestack industry that must be replaced with modern, clean renewable technology. Cars, trucks, planes&mdash;and boilers&mdash;must be quickly transitioned to renewable electric fuel and move past the antiquated age of combustion.&rdquo; We wanted to end this essay on a more conciliatory note and rebut this assertion with a challenge: let&rsquo;s try to replace combustion technology and remain open- minded to that. The question is how fast, and what should be considered &ldquo;bridge&rdquo; fuels and &ldquo;bridge&rdquo; technologies? In the meantime, we believe biomass is vital, not because it is the ideal energy pathway, but because in its best applications, it is far too efficient and affordable to pass up now. Author: John Ackerly President, Alliance for Green Heat jackerly@forgreenheat.org www.forgreeheat.org

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Alliance for Green Heat President John Ackerly presents the top three myths argued by both sides of the wood-burning debate in an effort to bring common sense and logic to what is often viewed as a polarizing issue. 

Six Ongoing Biomass Myths 

Cofiring coal and biomass is often a relatively simple process in which fuels are mixed prior to being combusted in a power plant. Although cofiring has been practiced for decades and is well-developed in Europe, it has been slow to catch on in North America.&nbsp; Coal is the primary fuel used to generate electricity in interior Alaska, including five small power plants, all grate systems less than 30 MW in size. total of about 600,000 tons of coal are combusted for power annually in Alaska, with local economic benefits associated with its mining, transporting and sales. The Usibelli mine, near Healy, Alaska, is the state&rsquo;s only operating surface coal mine, producing about 1.5 million tons of coal per year and supplying all of the coal-burning facilities in the state. The coal power plants in interior Alaska serve a diverse client base, including a university, a municipality and two military bases.&nbsp; Fairbanks, Alaska, has great potential to utilize biomass cofiring, because the region&rsquo;s power plants are all located near biomass resources.&nbsp; Fairbanks&rsquo; power comes from mostly stoker-fired grate systems, which are the easiest to convert to cofiring. This is especially true when cofiring wood with coal at small percentages or with similar particle sizes; for example, wood chips and pea coal. Some of this resource is being used as a feedstock for a pellet mill in North Pole, Alaska, which is approximately 10 miles from downtown Fairbanks.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Aurora Power Plant, located in downtown Fairbanks, Alaska, was the site of the cofiring test burns. This facility has a 32-MW nameplate capacity, sells up to 25 MW to a local utility, and burns about 210,000 tons of coal per year. Net electrical generation is close to 180,000 megawatt-hours per year. In addition to electricity, the plant provides steam and hot water for a district heating system serving downtown Fairbanks. This network includes approximately 15 miles of buried pipeline and reaches approximately 50 buildings.&nbsp; Grate Systems Overview, Challenges In grate-fired systems, the grate provides four main functions: to provide a platform for fuel drying, to burn the fuel, to distribute combustion air and dispose of ashes.&nbsp; Grate systems, either stationary or traveling, are most common for small-scale energy production facilities (i.e., less than about 50 MW) that combust solid fuels. In grate systems, larger fuel particles of both coal and biomass can rest on the grate, while any fine particles that are included in the fuel mix will burn in suspension above the grate. Research discussed in this article was completed at a combustion unit utilizing a conical fuel delivery system, which is a cone-shaped chamber located adjacent to the combustion chamber. The conical receives fuel until a certain predetermined level is reached, and then dumps fuel by gravity into the combustion chamber. An advantage of gravity-fed conicals is their reduced likelihood of jamming, a problem sometimes encountered with other types of fuel distribution systems.&nbsp; However, a disadvantage of conicals is that the gravity feed can sometimes distribute different-sized particles unevenly in the combustion chamber.&nbsp; Wood Fuel Quality Many fuel-related variables can influence the effectiveness of cofiring operations, such as moisture content, the percentage of biomass included in the fuel stream, relative energy content, fuel particle size distributions and quality (including the presence of bark, needles and dirt).&nbsp; Fuel characteristics can also influence other operational aspects of cofiring, including fuel storage and conveying, mixing, distribution on the combustion grate, composition of combustion gasses and ash generation. In this study, the wood and fuel particles were approximately the same size, facilitating mixing and conveying.&nbsp; The bulk density and particle geometry of the wood and coal can influence the mixing properties of the blend. In the combustion chamber, wood fuel can potentially burn more rapidly than the coal.&nbsp; Thus, mill residues from an ongoing wood products facility are a preferred source for reliability and consistency, especially if available at low cost. Alaska is perhaps unique in that the local subbituminous coal has about the same Btu content as dried wood fuel (both are close to 8,000 Btu per lb.).&nbsp; Therefore, mixing these fuels should require little adjustment to feed rates to achieve the same energy output.&nbsp; This is not the case in the contiguous U.S., particularly where eastern coals are used, which may have as much as twice the energy content of biomass. 
Wood/Coal Mixing, Conveying Aurora Power Plant presently has limited outdoor storage area for wood fuel. This could be a consideration for other cofiring facilities (for example, municipal power plants) located centrally in or near a downtown area.&nbsp; If Aurora were to cofire on a regular basis, or at higher percentages of biomass, additional storage and handling equipment would be needed.&nbsp; For small-scale grate systems, the easiest way to get a uniform fuel mixture is ususally to combine biomass and coal as it is transported inside the facility, often by conveyor. Despite the potential challenges of mixing wood and coal particles in real time during conveyance, our procedures resulted in very uniform fuel blends&mdash;credit to the power plant personnel in charge of fuel handling. It should be noted that although the procedure for introducing the biomass to the coal stream was simple for short tests, its manual nature makes it unsuitable for continuous cofiring, which would require a retrofit to the feed and mixing systems. Goals of the study included: to test the proof of concept of cofiring quaking aspen wood chips and coal, under two different cofiring percentages; to measure the combustion gases in stack emissions during cofiring; and to identify any operational problems or challenges at the power plant associated with cofiring.&nbsp; Cofiring Procedures Cofiring tests were conducted on two consecutive days in March 2015 at the Aurora Power Plant in downtown Fairbanks. Wood chips were provided by Superior Pellet Fuels in North Pole, fewer than 10 miles from the power plant. We utilized approximately 40 tons of clean, uniform aspen chips, sized to 1.5 inches maximum dimension or less. A front-end loader was used to transport the chips to the fuel feed system. Once fuel was inside the plant, a conveyer belt system was used to mix wood and coal uniformly to the desired ratio. Cofiring tests were implemented at two levels:&nbsp; 2.4 percent by energy value for the low-level testing day, and 4.8 percent of energy value for the high-level testing. Baseline data representing the power plant&rsquo;s standard combustion conditions (i.e., coal only) was collected for approximately one hour each morning.&nbsp; Afterward, blended fuel (coal with biomass) was introduced at the prescribed rates. Actual cofiring rates were determined by collecting fuel samples at the accessible point closest to the combustion chamber, immediately before fuel was introduced into the conical. Wood was then separated from coal, and each were weighed. The coal energy content data was provided by plant personnel, and wood energy content was determined by oven-drying samples and testing them in a bomb calorimeter. The composition of combustion gases were measured through the primary exhaust stack on the power plant roof. Combustion gas measurements were taken with a combination of three devices: a Bacharach brand PCA3 portable combustion gas analyzer (inserted into the stack), a TESTO brand analyzer (also inserted into the stack), and fixed, in-plant monitoring equipment.&nbsp; The Bacharach analyzer was used to collect O2&nbsp; (percentage), CO parts per million (ppm), CO with respect to O2&nbsp; (ppm), combustion efficiency (percentage), CO2&nbsp; (percentage), and excess air (percentage).&nbsp; The TESTO unit was used to measure NO and NO2&nbsp; (ppm) along with the same parameters as the Bacharach analyzer.&nbsp; Opacity was measured by Aurora Power Plant&rsquo;s in-house monitoring equipment. Data was collected either once every two minutes (Bacharach) or once every 30 seconds (TESTO).&nbsp; Findings Low-level cofiring tests: Average flue gas concentrations for CO increased markedly (by 82.4 percent) versus coal-only combustion.&nbsp; This was in contrast to CO2 concentrations, which decreased by 7.5 percent for low-level cofiring. Also for low-level cofiring, NO decreased by 20.32 ppm or 17.7 percent, and NO2&nbsp; increased by 2.27ppm or 13.3 percent (all versus coal-only combustion). Other cofiring research (Tillman, et al. 2001) has indicated a greater than 1 percent reduction in NOx compounds for each 1 percent level of cofiring.&nbsp; Finally, opacity increased slightly due to low-level cofiring, from an average of 5.7 to 5.9 percent (cofiring versus baseline). Thus, higher CO levels and particulate carryover can occur when cofiring wood and coal (versus burning coal only). High-level cofiring tests: For high-level cofiring, average combustion gas CO content increased by 74.0 percent, from 127 to 222 parts per million (ppm), versus coal-only combustion. It is likely that higher CO levels were the result of either higher moisture content of wood (and the need to vaporize this moisture) or insufficient overfire air, which limited complete combustion. Similarly, CO2&nbsp; concentrations were 21.6 percent higher. Also for high-level cofiring, NO increased slightly from 100.33ppm to 101.16ppm and NO2&nbsp; decreased from 20.38 ppm to 18.42 ppm versus coal-only combustion.&nbsp; Also for the high cofiring level, opacity increased slightly (from 6.0 to 6.1 percent) due to cofiring, however, it is unknown whether this is within the normal operating variation of the plant. Several similarities between low- and high-level cofire tests were observed. First, flue gas CO increased substantially with the addition of biomass to the fuel mix.&nbsp; Mean opacity increased, although only slightly, on both days when wood fuel was introduced, and 100 percent coal was no longer being burned.&nbsp; Although these levels showed very little difference, opacity could become an important future consideration because of air quality concerns in Fairbanks (particularly during winter months). Thus, any cofiring strategies aimed to reduce opacity could become beneficial. Power Plant Operations Totential logistic and operational challenges when cofiring were also observed.&nbsp; Our work in Alaska confirmed what numerous studies have observed&mdash;that cofiring biomass at low levels in grate combustion systems can be performed with relative ease, having only minor impacts on plant operations, including fuel storage, handling and performance. For low-level cofiring, the mixed fuel burned well with no issues or adjustments to combustion conditions. However, high-level cofiring was slightly more challenging, requiring careful control of feed rates to maintain uniform combustion across the grate. The wood&rsquo;s high moisture content, estimated to be close to 40 percent green basis, was likely a factor influencing combustion during the high cofire tests.&nbsp; In addition to generating greater incomplete combustion products such as CO, high moisture conditions also require more turbulent mixing in the flame zone for complete combustion to occur.&nbsp;&nbsp; Since the wood fuel was well-screened, individual particles were uniformly sized, and were only slightly larger than most coal particles. This could explain the relative ease of fuel mixing, and the uniform conditions occurring throughout conveying and combustion. The gravity-fed conical did a good job of distributing fuel uniformly across the grate, which was also likely related to the uniform chip size and moisture content. The following specific comments were offered by the plant operator who monitored cofiring testing: &bull; Cofiring rates: In general, aspen chips cofired at the low rate introduced no problems or challenges. For the high cofiring rate, there was some minor segregation of aspen chips from coal.&nbsp; Combustion was also somewhat more difficult due to greater level of moisture in the combustion chamber. &bull; Moisture content: lf chips had been at a lower moisture content, rather than fresh green, they might have burned more uniformly with more consistent steam load, even at the higher cofire rate. &bull; Spatial distribution of wood and coal: In general, the spatial distribution of wood and coal in the combustion chamber was quite uniform, and no problems were noted. &bull; Particle size range: If wood chips were oversized or too stringy, they could get caught in the under bunker part of the fuel conveying system, causing problems.&nbsp; Chips or hog fuel up to a 2-inch size maximum dimension range could work well for the plant&rsquo;s current fuel handling capability. Sawdust size should work well as long as it can be conveyed satisfactorily. &bull; Contaminants: Dirt, small rocks and other contaminants could be a problem, but not a cofiring showstopper. Any rocks in bottom ash would need to be run through a crusher, creating an additional processing step. Summary The tests at Aurora Power Plant demonstrated that cofiring relatively small amounts of biomass with coal is technically feasible with no equipment modifications needed, and minor impacts on plant operation.&nbsp; An important consideration was that the cofire tests were done under ideal conditions using high-quality wood chips, purchased at higher prices than most run-of-the-mill-biomass that could be economically feasible on an ongoing basis. Based on our research, we expect that cofiring low wood ratios would also be feasible at other four Fairbanks area power plants, since they are all of similar size, grate arrangements and coal types. Perhaps the most important finding was that CO levels increased on the order of 70 to 80 percent, versus coal-only combustion. This was likely due to the high moisture content of the aspen chips, resulting in less efficient combustion. However, this condition could potentially be mitigated as plant operators learn how to best fine-tune overfire air conditions. These factors point to the strong feasibility of cofiring green chips at levels up to about 10 percent of energy value, as was done in the study. If cofiring were adopted on an ongoing basis, wood products facilities near Fairbanks would have a viable market for their waste wood residues, a condition likely to occur in many parts of the contiguous U.S. where power plants are located in forested regions. Contact: David Nicholls Forest Products Technologist, U.S. Forest Service dlnicholls@fs.fed.us 907-738-2176

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For the first time in more than 30 years, cofiring tests were performed at a utility-scale power plant in Alaska.

Opportunities for Biomass Utilization  in the Last Frontier

The domestic and industrial wood pellet industries are motivated and influenced by different objectives and market factors when it comes to building or expanding, thus resulting in differing business models and practices. Ultimately, however, the end game is the same&mdash;to decrease the use of fossil fuels.&nbsp; In the U.S. export market, Enviva Partners&mdash;the world&rsquo;s largest utility-grade wood pellet producer&mdash;is expanding production by 1 million tons in response to an increased demand for wood pellets, particularly in Asian markets. According to Japan&rsquo;s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, there&rsquo;s upward of 25 million tons of biomass demand on the country&rsquo;s horizon. Enviva is building a new pellet production plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, and expanding facilities in Northampton County, North Carolina, and Southampton County, Virginia. In contrast, T&amp;D Wood Energy LLC&mdash;a family-owned business with a long involvement in forest products&mdash;recently opened a 35,000-ton capacity wood pellet plant in Sandford, Maine, to enter the home heating market in the Northeast U.S. Between the town of Sanford and the USDA providing incentives, and the nearby Pleasant River Lumber pine sawmill supplying much of the wood waste feedstock for pelletizing, the timing and opportunity were right. &ldquo;We had been trying to build an industrial facility for quite a while under our F.E. Wood Natural Energy entity name,&rdquo; says Tony Wood, who co-owns T&amp;D Wood Energy with his father, Dean. &ldquo;We decided that there&rsquo;s no real opportunity for us to get into the industrial segment at this time. This is a new venture we put together and our first pellet manufacturing facility. The ownership of the plant has a lot of forest product experience in sawmills and pellet mills.&rdquo; Viva Enviva Nina Mrose, Enviva&rsquo;s vice president of communications and public affairs, notes that the company&rsquo;s business model is to fully contract its production capacity. &ldquo;Given that our existing production capacity is already sold and spoken for, as we sign these additional long-term contracts, we need to create additional capacity in order to fill those commitments,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;We have a lot of customers in Europe, but we increasingly have much more geographic diversity in our customer base. Recently, we&rsquo;ve been signing more long-term contracts with Japan.&rdquo; Enviva chairman and CEO John Keppler recently reported that the company &ldquo;executed a new 17-year offtake contract with a premier Japanese trading house, adding another major investment-grade counterparty to our growing and diverse list of customers. Deliveries under this contract are expected to start in 2023, with initial volumes of 100,000 metric tons per year for the first five years, increasing to 175,000 metric tons per year thereafter.&rdquo; Chris Tynan, Enviva&rsquo;s vice president of expansion projects, says the company&rsquo;s portfolio is designed to support customers over the lives of its assets. With more and more customers in Japan and other Asian markets, Enviva has turned to either expanding or building additional assets in the U.S. Southeast.Authorized in 2018 with a combined budget of $130 million, the Northampton and Southampton expansion projects will produce an additional 400,000 metric tons of pellets per year. With the two expansions about an hour away from each other, they are being managed as a single project, Tynan says. &ldquo;Major pieces of equipment have been ordered and detailed engineering is nearing completion,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;We expect to have construction completed by the first half of 2020, contingent on receiving all permits.&rdquo; Tynan notes that Enviva has historically focused on greenfield development and acquisition for growth. &ldquo;Beyond providing the volume to meet our long-term obligations, it also increases the financial competitiveness of the existing assets, given that it&rsquo;s additional fixed-cost absorption on the same asset base,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;It also helps us maximize the great work of our best-in-class people at the Northampton and Southampton plants, in order to get more pellets while&nbsp; improving safety outcomes.&rdquo; Enviva broke ground on the Hamlet pellet plant in November 2017, and is beginning the final stages of the commissioning process. It is expected to produce 600,000 metric tons of pellets per year, beginning in the second quarter this year. The pellets will be shipped by rail to the company&rsquo;s marine terminal at the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina. When it comes to new additions or expansions, Mrose says Enviva prefers to stick with what&rsquo;s been successfully proven to work. &ldquo;Generally, we follow a build-and-copy approach,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;With Hamlet and the other new facilities in the planning stages, we take a look at the best of what&rsquo;s worked at the other plants to inform our design. Nothing&rsquo;s radically new. It&rsquo;s all things that have been tried, tested and perfected at other plants that we&rsquo;re using in the new design.&rdquo; Further down the road, Enviva is planning the next wave of development in what it refers to as the &ldquo;Pascagoula Cluster&rdquo; in Mississippi and Alabama. &ldquo;It will be a number of plants comparable in size to our larger plants that would feed into a new marine terminal at the Port of Pascagoula,&rdquo; Mrose explains. &ldquo;The permitting process is underway for the port facility, as well as the plant in Lucedale, Mississippi. Those are both pending final investment decisions and the issuance of the permit to move forward. We&rsquo;re looking to break ground this year on the first plant and the port facility pending permits and final investment decisions. Keppler says Enviva plans to deploy about $130 million in capital, generating a $30 million lift in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization on an annual basis. &ldquo;Those are very attractive investment opportunities, and certainly we continue to explore those within our broader assets,&rdquo;&nbsp; Keppler says. The bottom line is that the wood pellets Enviva is committed to deliver will displace more than 64 million tons of coal. &ldquo;That's an amazing statement about sustainability, but exactly how we're doing that showcases some of our innovation and leadership on the topic,&rdquo; Keppler adds. Building the Maine Line Wood recalls how F.E. Wood &amp; Sons struggled to find a way forward after its last mills closed and efforts to build a new industrial plant fell through. This led to the formation of T&amp;D Wood Energy about two years ago, and the search for an opportunity that was a good fit for the Wood&rsquo;s business plan and the region. &ldquo;We were itching to get back into it in a way that we could have a sustainable long-term future,&rdquo; Wood says. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t want to be in a downward-facing commodity; we didn&rsquo;t want to be in a business that didn&rsquo;t do some good for the community and for the region. Wood pellets were a good mix. We have a lot of long relationships with sawmills, loggers and landowners in the area whose markets were suffering.&rdquo; Wood says the town of Sanford gave the company the &ldquo;red carpet treatment&rdquo; to help it locate the pellet plant in the community. The Pleasant River Lumber sawmill proved a good choice logistically, providing most of the feedstock. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also bringing in sawdust and chips from several other sawmills in the region,&rdquo; Wood notes. &ldquo;With the strength of the pine sawmill market and saw timber market right now, they need a home for their waste products. We&rsquo;re giving them another outlet.&rdquo; The Sanford pellet plant was engineered and built by Maine-based Player Design Inc., which used a proprietary furnace and dryer system. &ldquo;We did a design evaluation with the Maine Technology Institute that allowed us and Player Design to go out into the market and look at all commercially available production processes for wood pellets and for heating and drying&mdash;feedstock preparation and fuel preparation,&rdquo; Wood says. &ldquo;We did a thorough evaluation before we started selecting equipment. Player signed on as our lead contractor, executed the project and now is turning it over to us as a fully operational facility.&rdquo; The plant uses an integrated control system, which enables operators to balance feed rates and fan speeds&mdash;maximizing production and minimizing energy use. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re getting the lowest greenhouse gas footprint that we can,&rdquo; Wood says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re burning all biomass to generate our process heat. It&rsquo;s sourced locally from the same loggers and sawmills supplying our feedstock. Energy efficiency is the name of the game because electricity isn&rsquo;t cheap. We were awarded several grants based on this innovative design.&rdquo; The sole product from the plant is Wood &amp; Sons Premium Wood Pellets made in Maine and sold by independent retailers&mdash;not big-box stores&mdash;throughout the Northeast. &ldquo;The independent retailers are the backbone of our plans,&rdquo; Wood says. &ldquo;We like that because it ties to the community and it ties to having happy customers. We have to make a really good product and stand by it. The people who own and operate these retail stores care most about their customers. They have really good fuel and really well-tuned and well-serviced stoves.&rdquo; Wood believes the approach T&amp;D Wood Energy used to find a location and build its plant with the assistance of Player Design resulted in a better facility and a better product that&rsquo;s good for the environment and the local economy. &ldquo;Rather than just supplying a single piece of equipment or rather than us, as owners being hands off, it was a collaborative process,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We ended up with a much better product at the end of the day as a result.&rdquo; Author: Patrick C. Miller Staff Writer, Biomass Magazine pmiller@bbiinternational.com 701-738-4923

With an increasing number of contracts in Asian markets, Enviva Partners is increasing production by expanding existing facilities and building a new plant, a 600,000-ton-per-year wood pellet plant under construction in Hamlet, North Carolina. 

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Enviva broke ground on its Hamlet pellet plant in November 2017 and is beginning the final stages of the commissioning process. Beginning in the second quarter this year, pellets produced at the plant will be shipped by rail to the company's terminal

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T&D Wood Energy's pellet plant was designed and built by Maine-based Player Design Inc. The plant incorporates Player's proprietary furnace and dryer systems, as well as an integrated control system to maximize production and minimize energy use.

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Before construction began on the T&D Wood Energy pellet plant, the Maine Technology Institute 
conducted a design evaluation. This enabled the company and Player Design to select the best commercial technologies available for feedstock and fuel prepa

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The father and son team of Tony (left) and Dean Wood continued a long family tradition in the forest 
products business by forming T&D Wood Energy and breaking ground on a 35,000-ton-per-year wood pellet plant in Sanford, Maine.  

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Though differing in size, scope and market reach, the ultimate goals of domestic and industrial wood pellet projects are similar.

Building Globally, Impacting Locally

The U.S. added 68 MW of biomass power last year, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but Georgia Renewable Power LLC is about to flip the switch on two biomass power plants in the Peach State that will nearly double this figure. The company has been relatively quiet about its achievements. While GRP&rsquo;s name has appeared in a smattering of press releases issued by project partners and subcontractors, the company itself has issued little information to the press in the way of official releases or announcements&mdash;it doesn&rsquo;t even have a functioning website. But don&rsquo;t be fooled by GRP&rsquo;s stealth mode, as the biomass power startup is making big strides in decarbonizing the grid. GRP&rsquo;s first operating biomass power plant is in Lumberton, North Carolina, not in Georgia as its name might suggest. Raymon Bean and Dave Shaffer founded GRP about five years ago. Their first order of business for the Lumberton project was securing a power purchase agreement (PPA) and a renewable energy certificates (RECs) contract, says Ciaran McManus, GRP&rsquo;s assets and operations manager. McManus relocated from Ireland to North Carolina two years ago to run GRP&rsquo;s biomass projects, through Kansas City, Missouri-based Designer Group USA asset management. GRP acquired a chicken litter burner and a 20-year PPA from Duke Power with RECs tied to it, and the company bought an old coal-fired power plant in Lumberton, North Carolina, to retrofit. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not easy because it&rsquo;s a 35-year-old coal-fired plant, which is a very straightforward fuel to burn,&rdquo; McManus says. &ldquo;Poultry litter is a completely different fuel. The ash content is typically between 18 and 22 percent&mdash;a factor four times greater than coal&mdash;and there&rsquo;s a lot of challenges with that. The Btu, moisture and sulfur content varies.&rdquo; With nearly 20 years in the power business, McManus says he has worked with virtually every fuel out there&mdash;gas, biomass, coal, and even solar and wind. After meeting with GRP owners in London two years ago, he was excited about the offer to work for GRP. &ldquo;Burning litter, I was intrigued by that,&rdquo; he says. Phase 1 in Lumberton consisted of converting the coal plant to burn biomass&mdash;30 percent poultry litter and 60 to 70 percent construction and demolition (C&amp;D) waste and green waste wood chips.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Managing your feedstock is all biomass is,&rdquo; says Carey Davis, GRP&rsquo;s executive vice president. Davis&rsquo; path with GRP began about five years ago, as GRP founder Bean was close with the contractor for whom Davis worked. &ldquo;I built the first plant in North Carolina,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Later on, when I joined GRP, they were starting Phase 2 of that plant. I came to execute the projects and grow this company.&rdquo; Davis says GRP&rsquo;s goal has always been to use as much C&amp;D waste as possible. &ldquo;We teamed up with a large supplier in the Southeast, Canal Wood LLC, to help us agglomerate smaller suppliers in the area,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;All in all, our wood feedstock in Lumberton today is mainly 30 percent C&amp;D and 70 percent green waste wood. A confident supply is what we need, and we trust our suppliers.&rdquo;
At 22 MW net using up to 65 percent C&amp;D and green wood waste, McManus says the plant currently consumes 300 to 350 tons of poultry litter per day, or 90,000 tons a year.&nbsp; When it comes to the green chips GRP burns, McManus says, &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t take quality green chips. We use waste wood from forestry, like top limbs and mulch.&rdquo; McManus says GRP spent one-and-a-half years constructing and commissioning the retrofitted plant. &ldquo;I arrived just as this was completed,&rdquo; he says. With Phase 1 complete, GRP swiftly moved into Phase 2, which involved a project to capture waste heat to fuel three dryers in a system co-designed with IMI Industrial Services Group that allows the waste heat to bypass the cooling tower, along with a condensing loop. &ldquo;This takes waste heat from the cooling tower and generates RECs,&rdquo; Davis says. Under the current state thermal REC scheme, the company is not allowed to dry its own fuel for power generation, but it can sell the dried fuel and generate RECs. &ldquo;We have wood offtake agreements and sell that dried wood to local pellet producers,&rdquo; Davis says. McManus tells Biomass Magazine that GRP&rsquo;s Lumberton plant is currently selling about 1,000 dry tons of wood per week. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re commissioning the dryers at the moment, so we&rsquo;ll be increasing capacity soon,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We hope to produce between 2,000 and 3,000 dry tons a week for sale to area pellet mills and chipping companies.&rdquo; The new setup is basically another version of combined heat and power (CHP), McManus says. &ldquo;The waste energy from the cooling water normally goes to the atmosphere,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re capturing 40 percent of it to dry wood. It&rsquo;s not free&mdash;there&rsquo;s always a cost&mdash;but it is energy that&rsquo;s recaptured.&rdquo; Phase 3, currently in design, will take poultry litter combustion to a whole new level. &ldquo;The third phase is a completely new power plant in Lumberton,&rdquo; McManus says. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re currently burning 35 percent poultry litter with plans to get to 40 percent this summer, but we need to get to 100 percent to maximize our PPA.&rdquo; The RECs generated in Lumberton are directly related to the energy input from poultry litter. If the energy input is 20 percent poultry litter and 80 percent wood, then the facility only generates RECs for 20 percent. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re highly incentivized to burn 100 percent litter,&rdquo; McManus says. &ldquo;We get rewarded for doing that, but it&rsquo;s also a major waste problem. North Carolina is the second largest poultry producer in the U.S., so getting rid of all that poultry waste is a big issue.&rdquo; Davis says the new Lumberton plant has been on the horizon for some time. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be a cool plant&mdash;there&rsquo;s nothing like it in the state, or the world,&rdquo; he says, qualifying this by adding Fibrominn in Benson, Minnesota, is now offline. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll take 100 percent poultry litter, burn it, sell the ash for fertilizer and dry wood for bedding houses. It&rsquo;ll be a full, homogeneous circle of life for a biomass plant. It&rsquo;s pretty neat. We&rsquo;re proud of it.&rdquo; McManus says GRP plans to have the new plant operational by 2022. The new facility will be capable of generating 40 MW of power and will consume 450,000 tons of poultry litter per year. It will also feature four dryers operating on waste heat. GRP will continue to run the current plant until the new one comes online. Once the new Lumberton plant is operational, Davis says what will be done with the existing facility is still &ldquo;up in the air,&rdquo; but GRP has some solid ideas. &ldquo;We thought about using the existing plant to burn swine waste,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s 8 MW of swine in the existing PPA.&rdquo; McManus says GRP is seriously looking into this. &ldquo;Swine slurry presents big challenges though,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s 80 to 90 percent moisture, which is not good. With university partners we are looking at several options, including the use of dry presses to get the water out, and then pelleting it.&rdquo; Twin Sisters As operations and a new design phase progress in Lumberton, a big priority for GRP is going live with its two nearly complete power plants in Franklin and Madison counties in Georgia. These two 58 MW net, 65 MW gross, biomass power plants are &ldquo;twin sisters,&rdquo; McManus says. While construction officially began in January 2018, Davis says work began on these projects more than two years ago. &ldquo;March 6, 2017, was my first day at GRP, and I started working on these from day one,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We poured the boiler foundations in January 2018. These projects have been every day of my life since. We&rsquo;re not done yet, but I can see the finish line.&rdquo; Twenty-five months after Davis&rsquo; first day, the Franklin and Madison projects are 98 percent complete. While the two Georgia projects began in early 2017, their origins were much earlier. Davis says in 2005 the Atlanta-based Georgia Power utility company issued a request for proposal (RFP) on a renewables package that included biomass. There were no takers on the biomass portion and, years later, the sunset date was approaching when GRP bought up several PPAs, combined them into one and then divided the numbers into two so, as Davis says, &ldquo;two counties could reap the benefits.&rdquo; GRP&rsquo;s PPAs with Georgia Power are 30-year contracts. In April 2018, GRP contracted with Veolia Energy Operating Services LLC to operate and maintain all three of its biomass power plants. Veolia had been operating the Lumberton plant under a short-term contract for a year prior to the April 2018 deal. Biomass Magazine reached out to Veolia to discuss the contract, but Matt Burgard, communications manager with Veolia North America, said negotiations are still ongoing and the company cannot discuss the agreement until the terms are finalized. Davis says GRP has had good experience with Veolia so far. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve assembled great biomass teams,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And they&rsquo;re in the process of assembling our teams in Madison and Franklin counties.&rdquo; Georgia Renewable Power-Franklin LLC is constructed on a greenfield site, according to Davis, while Georgia Renewable Power-Madison LLC is a greenfield project on a brownfield site. &ldquo;In Franklin, there was an original 22 MW PPA tied with that land, so GRP bought it and added megawatts to it,&rdquo; he says. For the Madison project, GRP bought an old Weyerhaeuser facility for the infrastructure. &ldquo;It had an existing interconnect,&rdquo; Davis says. &ldquo;We had to upgrade it, but we decided to locate the project there for ease of access. It also has offices there.&rdquo; GRP had originally planned for the Franklin project to use equipment from an existing power plant in Gormania, West Virginia. BL Harbert International performed the dismantling and relocation. However, GRP could not secure financing for the project if old equipment were to be installed. &ldquo;It was just packaged up and sits in a warehouse,&rdquo; Davis tells Biomass Magazine. With the PPAs in place, the company needed financing to get the twin sisters built. &ldquo;Raymon had the equity, but we needed $350 million to build the plants,&rdquo; Davis says. &ldquo;We did a lot of things upfront. We locked in the long lead time items early. I did the site work and piling prior to closing financing. GRP self-performed the concrete work to preserve time. We had piles in the ground but nothing else &lsquo;til after we closed the loan. We spent our money wisely and made progress as best we could, so when MasTec Power Corp. showed up, they could hit the ground running.&rdquo; MasTec Power was hired as the EPC contractor and subcontracted Siemens to provide SST-600 steam turbines, SGen-100A air-cooled generators and three-phase, step-up transformer technologies for the projects. Siemens also delivered an SPPA-T3000 control system to maximize overall plant performance through data analytics while also improving safety, efficiency and reliability. Amec Foster Wheeler boilers were also secured and installed in the twin sisters. Designer Group USA serves as the lead project engineering firm.&nbsp; GRP&rsquo;s Georgia plants will rely on C&amp;D waste, requiring&nbsp;42.5 tons of 10 percent moisture fuel an hour, according to Davis, or 60 tons per hour of 30 percent moisture fuel.&nbsp;&ldquo;Our target is to use as much waste feedstock as possible,&rdquo; McManus says. &ldquo;We want to avoid using green chips. We are working on getting our full volumes from waste, and within a year we hope to have the volume required for both plants. It&rsquo;s a lot of waste wood that is required. It takes a lot of processing. We&rsquo;re trying to get as much as we can by rail. I should also mention we&rsquo;re fully permitted to burn old rail ties. A lot of these are going to landfills. We&rsquo;ve also installed state-of-the-art emissions technologies.&rdquo; McManus says the first firing of the boilers is scheduled for May, and from there the plant will increase to baseload power production by late June or early July. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re pretty busy now,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We have our fuel yards commissioned and our dryers up and running.&rdquo; Davis and McManus say GRP is implementing the same dryer technology in Franklin and Madison counties employed in Lumberton, just with bigger dryers. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a crazy schedule-driven job&mdash;a tension-driven job&mdash;but we all think we&rsquo;re going to survive,&rdquo; Davis quips. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re close to the first fire. We&rsquo;re halfway through commissioning. It&rsquo;s been a team-building project nothing short of challenging. The main challenge was preserving our schedule while trying to close financing. That was a major hurdle, but otherwise, just normal construction challenges in a tighter window than anyone can imagine. But these plants will be great for the community. They&rsquo;re state-of-the-art and close to utility grade. We didn&rsquo;t cut any corners on suppliers or the quality of design. We&rsquo;re hoping to have the most efficient biomass plants in the U.S.&rdquo; Author: Ron Kotrba Senior Editor, Biomass Magazine 218-745-8347 rkotrba@bbiinternational.com

Georgia Renewable Power-Madison LLC 
is a greenfield project built on a brownfield 
site previously occupied by Weyerhaeuser, 
complete with infrastructure and offices. 

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Georgia Renewable Power closed financing in December 2017, and completed much of the site work prior to this. In January 2018, the Franklin County site was ready for EPC contractor MasTec Power Corp. to hit the ground running once financing closed. 

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Georgia Renewable Power-Franklin LLC is a greenfield project built on a site that had a power purchase agreement tied to the land. 

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Georgia Renewable Powerâ€™s foray into biomass power occurred in Lumberton, North Carolina, where the company converts poultry litter and C&D waste to power. 

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The Madison County site in January 2018 is ready for construction. Just 15 months after this photo was taken, the plant was 98 percent complete. 

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Georgia Renewable Power is commissioning two new 58-MW biomass power facilities in Georgia while planning a redesign at its flagship plant in North Carolina.

The Twin Biomass Sisters of Franklin and Madison Counties

Acity rich with history and unmatched hospitality, Savannah, Georgia, welcomed the largest biomass gathering in the world in mid-March. At the International Biomass Conference &amp; Expo, technology developers, academia, investors, service and equipment providers, plant personnel and a range of other stakeholders met to gather information, network and collaborate. Following a day-long preconference workshop focused on biomass feedstock logistics, the event kicked off with a keynote address delivered by Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols. Annual award recipients were named by Biomass Magazine, with Gordon Murray, executive director of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada, receiving the Excellence in Bioenergy Award, and Goddard College the Groundbreaker of the Year Award. Next, trade organization executives participated in an industry roundtable to discuss policy, challenges, priorities, and the content and significance of the messages the industry conveys to policymakers and the public. Panelists included Patrick Serfass, American Biogas Council; Tim Portz, Pellet Fuels Institute; Carrie Annand, Biomass Power Association; Seth Ginther, U.S. Industrial Pellet Association; Johannes Escudero, Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas; and Dan Wilson, Biomass Thermal Energy Council. Roughly 80 speakers presented in breakout sessions focused on biomass heat and power, pellets and densified biomass, biogas and waste-to-energy,&nbsp; and advanced biofuels, with the closing event bringing attendees to the East Coast Terminal to observe how the state-of-the-facility reviews, stores and loads wood pellets onto waiting ships. The 2020 International Biomass Conference &amp; Expo will be held in Nashville, Tennessee, Feb. 3-5.

General session participants meet outside the Savannah Conference Center. Patrick Serfass, executive director, American Biogas Council; Carrie Annand, executive director, Biomass Power Association; Seth Ginther, executive director, U.S. Industrial Wo

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Brad Bleima, senior engineer, EcoEngineers; Serfass and Bob Cleaves, president, Biomass Power Association, present in detail on the history of the Renewable Fuels Standard and implementation of e-RINs.

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Brian Edwards, director of engineering, Conversion Technology Inc., discusses combustible dust hazard analyses during a dust control and fire risk mitigation panel, which included speakers Jeff Nichols, managing partner, Industrial Fire Protection LL

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Escudero, center, highlights the role that specific public policy and related advocacy continues to play in protecting and expanding existing markets, as well as creating new ones.

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Anna Simet, editor of Biomass Magazine, left, interviews association leaders during the International Biomass Conference & Expo general session industry roundtable.
Participating in the discussion were Serfass, Annand, Portz, Ginther, Escudero and Wi

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Todd Taylor, CEO, Avisen Legal, moderates a biogas and waste-to-energy panel including participants Michael Corbett, director of applied Science, Divert; Justin Price, principal, Evergreen Engineering Inc.; and Roger Ford, CEO, Eureka Energy Corp.

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Matt Valentine, Mark Jones Jr. and Johnny Sanders, Lubrication Engineers.

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Katrina Bagwell and Tommy Sweat, Environmental Planning Specialists, with 
Bernard Scheff, American Biogas Council, and Lynn Beane, Montrose Environmental Group. 

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Alyssa Siemonsma and Tiffany Trottman, Nelson Engineering.

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Fifty-plus attendees toured Peeples Industries' East Coast Terminal Savannah Pellet Facility, where two storage domes give the facility 50,000 tons of dry, covered storage on-site, and the rail infrastructure can accommodate 80-car unit trains. This 

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Judi Tyacke-Rawlings and Heather McMaster, Rawlings Waste Wood Recovery Systems

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Greg Manley, Cooper Rainey and Bill Conroy, Rossee Oil Co.

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Serfass and Annand discuss the impact implementation of e-RINs under the Renewable Fuel Standard would have on the biomass and biogas power sectors.

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Tim Echols, Commissioner of Georgia Public Service Commission, welcomes attendees with a discussion on forestry and biomass energy in the state.

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Kevin Desjardins, Keith Manufacturing Co., and Tim Portz, Pellet Fuels Institute, perform the trade show and welcome reception ribbon-cutting. 

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Gordon Murray, Wood Pellet Association of Canada, was named recipient of the Excellence in Bioenergy Award, presented by Simet.

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The 12th annual International Biomass Conference & Expo 
drew nearly 900 attendees to Savannah, Georgia.

Biomass in the Hostess City

Macquarie Infrastructure Partners acquires Wheelabrator&nbsp; Macquarie Infrastructure Partners and Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. announced that MIP, acting through one of its managed funds, has completed the purchase of Wheelabrator from funds managed by Energy Capital Partners. MIP operates within the Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets division of Macquarie Group. Wheelabrator is a leading owner and operator of waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities, with a platform of 25 assets in the U.S. and the U.K, including 19 WTE facilities (three under construction), two waste fuel facilities and four ash monofills. Wheelabrator also recovers metals for recycling at two advanced metals recovery systems and is in the process of developing a central upgrade facility. Morbark introduces Rayco T415 Forestry Mulcher and Hydra-Stumper Morbark LLC announced the debut of the Rayco T415 Forestry Machine. The T415 allows customers to change between a Predator forestry mower/mulcher head and a Hydra Stumper stump cutter attachment for optimal versatility. Powered by a 415-horsepower (310-kW) CAT C9.3B Diesel Tier 4 Final engine, the T415 boasts a closed-loop hydrostatic system to power the mulcher or cutter head, sending 140 gallons per minute to the attachment&rsquo;s drive motor(s). The hydraulic output is power optimized to match the engine&rsquo;s power curve, keeping the mulcher/stumper RPM constant, even under load for a finer mulched product with fewer passes. Bardle named head of Immingham Humber International Terminal Associated British Ports announced that Martin Bardle, formerly the company&rsquo;s head of compliance, has stepped into an operational position and taken up the helm at Immingham&rsquo;s Humber International Terminal. The site handles 10 percent of the country&rsquo;s energy cargo and hosts the largest biomass handling facility in the United Kingdom&mdash;Immingham Renewable Fuels Terminal, the result of a 2015 agreement with Drax Power Station. Prior to his port career, Bardle worked for the British Army as a plant and equipment fitter apprentice and served for almost 15 years in the Royal Engineers. After leaving the Army, Martin worked in a succession of health and safety leadership roles with companies such as Balfour Beatty, Rolls-Royce and Mace. Martin holds a Master of Business Administration from Warwick Business School and a Master of Science in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety Management. He joined ABP on the Humber in 2015. SBP names technical committee members&nbsp; Sustainable Biomass Partnership CEO Carsten Huljus has named the organization&rsquo;s technical committee members, who took up their positions with immediate effect. The technical committee is a representation of specialist expertise across the disciplines encompassed by the SBP standards, including forest management, feedstock processing and biomass distribution, as well as knowledge of auditing, certification and accreditation processes and procedures. The role of the committee is to provide advice to the board on SBP's technical and scientific functions. The six members are Kim Cesafsky, manager of sustainability at Enviva; Anders Hildeman, forestry and certification independent consultant; Brenda Hopkin, forestry and certification independent consultant; Peter Kofod Kristensen, senior lead sustainability advisor at &Oslash;rsted; Rob Shaw, technical manager at Soil Association Certification Ltd.; and Martin Walter, an independent consultant and professor in timber trade, wood manufacturing and certification at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences.
Covanta, Green Investment Group reach England WTE plant financial close Covanta Holding Corp. and Green Investment Group Ltd. announced that the Rookery South Energy Recovery Facility in Bedfordshire, England, has reached financial close and will commence construction. Covanta and GIG will each own 40 percent of the state-of-the-art facility, with primary waste supplier Veolia ES (UK) Ltd. owning the remaining 20 percent. The Rookery facility will provide 545,000 metric tons of annual treatment capacity for nonrecyclable waste. Veolia will deliver the majority of Rookery&rsquo;s waste supply under a long-term contract, with the balance sourced through other commercial, industrial and municipal counterparties. Construction of the 60-MW facility will be led by Hitachi Zosen Inova under a turnkey engineering, procurement and construction contract and is expected to take approximately 36 months to complete. Covanta will provide technical oversight during construction and supply operations and maintenance services when the project commences operations in 2022. SCS offering SFI Chain-of-Custody Standard SCS Global Services is now offering chain-of-custody certification to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Chain-of-Custody Standard.&nbsp; SFI is a leading, credible certification in North America for responsible forest products. This new service offering leverages SCS as a one-stop shop for the wood and paper industries, providing clients with increased efficiency for dual and triple chain-of-custody certification to the major three forest sustainability standards. SCS is also currently undergoing accreditation for, and will soon be offering certification services for SFI Forest Management and SFI Fiber Sourcing Standards. SoCalGas&rsquo;s Minter named RNG champion Southern California Gas Co. recently announced George Minter, the company&rsquo;s regional vice president of external affairs and environmental policy, was named Renewable Natural Gas Champion by Climate Resolve, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that focuses on local solutions to global climate change. At SoCalGas, Minter is responsible for the company&rsquo;s public affairs, community relations, public policy and energy and environmental affairs functions. He is a long-time policy professional specializing in energy and environmental matters, program development, communications and political advocacy. Climate Resolve lauded Minter&rsquo;s efforts to increase the use of renewable natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that benefits all people, including low-income families. Minter was honored at Climate Resolve&rsquo;s annual Coolest in L.A. Gala, a celebration of innovation in Southern California&rsquo;s Fight Against Climate Change. Active Energy Group acquires CoalSwitch site Active Energy Group announced that the acquisition of an industrial site in Lumberton, North Carolina, has been satisfied. The site will become the new base for all AEG's CoalSwitch operations in the U.S., and house the first permanent production facility for CoalSwitch. The site is strategically located close to AEG&rsquo;s joint-venture partner, Georgia Renewable Power LLC, and is also in a prime lumber district in the U.S. It includes up to 415,000 square feet of covered factory space, and 151 acres of surrounding land. It was purchased for a total consideration of $3.3 million.

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FutureMetrics has learned that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is considering palm kernel shell (PKS) sustainability requirements. According to information informally circulating, it appears the requirement of sustainability, legality and traceability for PKS is under serious discussion and likely to be imposed on current and new PKS procurement. The exact regulation wording and whether these rules will be applied to already-signed contracts for PKS are unknown, but it appears very probable that Japan is moving toward a more rigorous set of requirements on biomass fuel procurement. Japan is already a major importer of PKS. In 2018, the country imported 1.265 million metric tons of PKS, 68 percent of total PKS exports, all of which came from Indonesia and Malaysia. PKS is a primary fuel for many of the Japanese independent power producers (IPPs) that are generating or soon plan to generate power with the benefit of the feed-in-tariff (FiT). The FiT is part of the Japan&rsquo;s policy for increasing the proportion of low- to zero-carbon-emitting power generation. Many IPP projects are also committed to use industrial wood pellets in their fuel mix. In most jurisdictions that have policies to support the use of renewable biomass fuels, in order to receive policy benefits, the biomass fuels must be certified as being produced from sustainable sources. This is the basic necessary condition that assures all the carbon emitted by the combustion of the fuel is absorbed by the growth of the biomass replacing what has been harvested and used as fuel.&nbsp; As the basis for carbon emission mitigation in the power sector, industrial wood pellets used as a substitute for coal in power stations in western Europe and England must meet strict and rigorously applied rules, proving that the forest inventories are not being depleted in order to qualify for the policy support. Japan is a major importer of wood pellets, and it&rsquo;s expected that its pellet imports will exceed its PKS imports in 2019. Because of the history of sustainability requirements for EU and U.K. industrial wood pellets, major producing nations are almost 100 percent certified under one of several recognized and accredited certifying bodies. Thus, when Japan finalizes its sustainably requirements for biomass fuels, pellets produced in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia, Russia and South America will already have the credentials to be legally considered as qualifying fuel in FiT-supported IPPs and in utility power plants that cofire. This is not the case with PKS. The PKS supply chain is highly fragmented with many independent smallholder farmers. Some estimates have smallholders in Indonesia comprising 60 percent of total palm oil production by 2030. An estimate by the World Resources Institute suggests that less than 1 percent of independent smallholders are certified as sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil. Whatever the actual totals, a significant portion of PKS is derived from uncertified sources. Indonesia and Malaysia, due to a legacy of rapid and massive deforestation to clear land for small and large palm oil plantations, have challenges in building credibility. Managing the growth of the industry and controlling deforestation has been a difficult balance for the palm oil-producing nations. Expanding smallholder certification will be a positive change, but will take time. There are also structural differences in the supply chains for PKS and pellets that present challenges. Pellet producers have invested many hundreds of millions of dollars to build pellet factories, and need to have a reliable and consistent output over many years to satisfy the return on investment criteria of the investors and lenders. In contrast, PKS aggregators have relatively little capital invested, as there is no conversion of raw material to an upgraded product. Unlike industrial wood pellets, PKS markets do not have producers that can engage in long-term offtake agreements with quantity and quality guarantees, and with delivered price certainty. FutureMetrics expects that some portion of the current imports from Malaysia and Indonesia will be curtailed. Reduction in the quantity of PKS imported into Japan will depend on the final METI rules and the ability of PKS suppliers to meet those rules. We also expect that industrial wood pellet demand in Japan will increase as IPPs seek alternative fuel to keep the rate of power generation from their stations at the required level. At least in the near- and medium-term, the FiT is sufficient to compensate for the higher cost of pellet fuel. Margins will shrink because the cost of pellet fuel is about 15 percent higher per MWh than PKS. The way the FitT is crafted, however, with a fixed rate over 20 years, it is generous in the early years in order to provide a buffer between a fixed top line revenue and the inevitable increasing costs of fuel and plant operations that will occur over 20 years. In later years, margins are expected to shrink due to cost increases (inflation), while the top line FiT revenue remains fixed. In the early years of the FiT, there is enough buffer built into the rate to allow higher-cost pellet fuel to substitute for PKS. Presumably, as palm oil producers respond to certification requirements over time, PKS imports will trend upward after what is likely to be a rapid and relatively sudden drop when sustainability requirements are implemented. Authors: William Strauss President, FutureMetrics Inc. William.strauss@futuremetrics.com Yoshinobu Kusano Policy Advisor, FutureMetrics Inc. Yoshi.Kusano@FutureMetrics.com www.futuremetrics.com

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With Japan considering palm kernel shell sustainability requirements, Japanese imports will likely face a steep decline as regulations go into effect. Once requirements can be met by palm oil producers, they will inevitably trend upward again. 

Japan Considering Sustainability Credentials for Palm Kernel Shells

Slow and steady wins the race&mdash;or does a fast pace earn a place? As a runner myself, being honest, slow doesn&rsquo;t usually earn a medal. When it comes to project development, however, the winning projects usually aren&rsquo;t the ones speeding to the finish line. In the biomass industry, we&rsquo;ve seen how rushing projects has fared, particularly in the domestic wood pellet market. It became oversaturated for a short stint about a decade ago, but is finally balancing out after some hard lessons. F.E. Wood Energy in Sanford, Maine, is the newest domestic market-focused wood pellet plant to come online in the U.S. in a quite a while. The concept was on the table for years, as the father and son team knew that doing its homework on feedstock markets and availability, design, technology and end markets meant taking the long road, but it would lead the company to a place that made sense. &ldquo;We were itching to get back into it in a way that we could have a sustainable, long-term future,&rdquo; Wood says. In our page-32 feature, &ldquo;Building Globally, Impacting Locally,&rdquo; by Staff Writer Patrick Miller, Tony Wood discusses long-term relationships with sawmills, loggers and landowners in the area, the thorough design evaluation done prior to selecting equipment, and how independent retailers are the backbone of the company&rsquo;s plans. In the same story&mdash;drawing a comparison of sorts to the domestic and industrial markets and their driving forces&mdash;Enviva Partners shares details of its ongoing expansion and new construction projects, which will enable the company to meet growing demand from overseas customers. Continuing that note of new development, be sure to check out our page-24 feature, &ldquo;The Twin Biomass Sisters of Franklin and Madison Counties,&rdquo; by Senior Editor Ron Kotrba. In it, Kotrba digs into the development and construction of Georgia Renewable Power&rsquo;s 58-MW biomass power plants, which are currently undergoing commissioning. Also in this issue, you&rsquo;ll find an extensive review of utility-scale cofiring tests performed in Alaska, and a photo review of the International Biomass Conference &amp; Expo, where market expansion and project development was a key theme. And, of course, the positive messages our industry should&nbsp; convey to the public and policymakers, because without their support, it&rsquo;s a lot more difficult to get a shovel in the ground. Author: Anna Simet Editor asimet@bbiinternational.com

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In her editor's note from the May/June 2019 print issue of Biomass Magazine, editor Anna Simet discusses the contents of the issue, recognizing that after oversaturation in the pellet market 10 years ago, the industry has finally found a balance. 

May/June Biomass

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Business Briefs

Columns

US EPA Climate Changing on RFS?

A $5 Million X-Prize to Reinvent the Wood Stove

Carbon Capture with Storage: A New Frontier for Biomass?

The Varying Global Energy Landscape

Six Ongoing Biomass Myths

Japan Considering Sustainability Credentials for Palm Kernel Shells

Pushing for Projects That Make Sense

Featured

Building Out Biomass in the Land Down Under

From Impoverished to Empowered

Rallying for RNG

Building Globally, Impacting Locally

The Twin Biomass Sisters of Franklin and Madison Counties

Biomass in the Hostess City

Contributions

Healthy Demand for Southern Timber Ensures Forested Lands Remain Forested

Opportunities for Biomass Utilization in the Last Frontier

May/June Biomass.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

Business Briefs

Columns

US EPA Climate Changing on RFS?

A $5 Million X-Prize to Reinvent the Wood Stove

Carbon Capture with Storage: A New Frontier for Biomass?

The Varying Global Energy Landscape

Six Ongoing Biomass Myths

Japan Considering Sustainability Credentials for Palm Kernel Shells

Pushing for Projects That Make Sense

Featured

Building Out Biomass in the Land Down Under

From Impoverished to Empowered

Rallying for RNG

Building Globally, Impacting Locally

The Twin Biomass Sisters of Franklin and Madison Counties

Biomass in the Hostess City

Contributions

Healthy Demand for Southern Timber Ensures Forested Lands Remain Forested

Opportunities for Biomass Utilization in the Last Frontier

May/June Biomass