Forests could be tapped as energy source

If the proposed plan to burn wood pellets for boilers to heat Sisters High School is completed, a series of events will begin to fall into place that could make our air healthier to breath, save money, and create jobs.

Economists, silvicultualists, engineers, entrepreneurs and planners are turning on their collective imagination to the opportunities the pellet-burning project and others like it may present.

Trees take up carbon dioxide from the air and store it in plant tissues through the process of photosynthesis. When trees die, or are burned, they release the CO2, which makes wood-burning nearly carbon-neutral. On the other hand, burning fossil fuels adds CO2 (and other gases, such as sulfur dioxides) to the atmosphere.

Phil Chang, Community Resources Administrator for Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council - an office in Redmond serving three counties and eight cities - believes that in time, the forest around Sisters could yield the raw material to supply a new pellet manufacturing plant being constructed in Redmond. The plant is expected to be up and running by the late part of 2010.

"The new pellet plant that is currently being built in Redmond (Pacific Pellet), will begin operations using mill residue for pellet-making; in the future, they hope to buy local biomass for conversion into pellets that will be available for sale to customers such as the Sisters School District," said Cindy Glick, Special Forest Products and Silviculture Coordinator for the Ochoco and Deschutes National Forests.

If economic conditions support the collection of residual wood removed from the Sisters Ranger District for a variety of forest management objectives, it could mean the beginning of new jobs, the end of wasted BTUs (British Thermal Units, standard measurement of heat), less smoke, and reduction of the hazards of burning slash in the forest.

A pellet boiler at SHS would require about 200 tons of pellets annually to provide the BTUs required to heat the water for the school.

Chang also believes that with careful planning, a central heating plant, providing heat from pellet boilers, could be developed to serve the entire City of Sisters, like those now in use in parts of Seattle, Eugene and St. Paul, Minnesota.

"The use of wood as biomass will eventually mean a great plus for the Sisters area," Chang says. "Billions of BTUs will no longer be going up in smoke from burning slash piles, thinning and logging for forest health objectives will supply tons of woody raw material that could be turned into industrial pellets.

"The cost savings from not having to purchase fossil fuels will be significant," Chang adds. "The money that was once leaving the area - and our nation - for oil will remain in the community when we turn to biomass for heating."

Money is also saved on the equipment used to supply fuels for heating. In places where pellet boilers have replaced oil-burning furnaces, the same trucks that once hauled high-cost oil have been inexpensively converted to haul pellets.

At the present time, there is only one plant making wood pellets in the Northwest: Bear Mountain Forest Products, in Cascade Locks, turns out about 40,000 tons a year. The company uses raw material from Douglas fir processed in the sawmill at Warm Springs. Douglas fir is used to make premium pellets, popular for residential and industrial pellet stoves.

The ash content from Doug fir pellets is less than .5 percent of the total mass, whereas ponderosa pine and other wood products have a slightly higher ash content.

"But even at that," Chang says, "taking out a small bucket of ash once a week from a pellet boiler doesn't mean much in maintenance costs - and it can be used to help keep soils healthy."

While pellets are an ideal substitute for fossil fuels - where one acre of trees produces 10 tons of biomass - it isn't a suitable substitute for a coal-burning electrical plant.

"It takes about 10,000 tons of biomass to make one megawatt of electricity," Chang says, "and when you consider it takes two tons of green wood to make one bone-dry ton of pellets, that may bring up some serious forest sustainability issues."

In Europe, pellet heating has become the rage in new homes, and for modifying heating systems in older homes.

"Three-quarters of the new homes and businesses in Austria have pellet furnaces or boilers, heating beneath-floor hot water systems," Chang says, "making Europe a growing market for pellets made in Canada and the U.S."

"There is one more element to increase the efficiency of burning pellets," says Rob Doughtie of Sunlight Solar Energy in Bend: "Installing solar collectors that will preheat the water before it goes into the boiler - that could make the entire system just about as green as it can be."