Coos the Center of Alternative Energy Part 2

Coos the Center of Alternative Energy Part 2

So former Cong. Bass has been hired to “smoothe the way” for Laidlaw’s plans for firing up the #11 boiler on the Burgess Pulp Mill site. Good luck Charlie!

Meanwhile 62% respond to Coos Conversations poll saying they oppose (with a good portion saying they’d leave Berlin if that plan transpires) reuse of the conversion boiler as a biomass plant. And Michael Bartoszek of Laidlaw says “unquestionably the wood basket is there” to supply his proposed plant’s 500,000 ton appetite.

Interesting stuff! But what’s the context? Is there sufficient wood in that wood basket?

Lest anyone think I’m the skunk at the picnic let me start by saying I am pro alternative energy and well planned, efficient biomass plants as a source of investment, jobs and sustainable power for the entire county. In my business it would be foolhardy not to look at $500 million in potential development as a worthy addition to the county’s economy. However, I am not supportive of: development that repeats the unreliable boom/bust economic cycles of the past; seeing unsustainable forestry prolonged in this county; inefficiency using 19^th century technology when 21^st technology and knowledge is available.

Let me peel back the skins of the onion a bit.

Last installment I wrote of stand alone biomass plants being 30% efficient. That’s fact, not fiction and it doesn’t matter who operates the plant that’s just the physical reality of steam generated electricity, 60% of the available energy in the wood chip is shed in unused steam, stack gasses and inefficiencies. Not a very good use of a finite, if not scarce, local resource. At least Laidlaw has said they are looking to co-locate an industry that can use some of their steam which makes the plant more efficient. But developers - please don’t suggest that the beneficent reason you are building these plants is to put loggers back in the woods earning a living. That’s blowing steam up my skirt and I don’t need that rush.

Ask an idled logger. There is no living to be made harvesting low-grade wood alone. Harvesting biomass for power plants is a secondary consideration for loggers mobilizing on harvesting jobs. If there are no saw logs/veneer logs, high-grade, high value wood to harvest and produce a decent return on investment no logger is going to invest $300,000 on a skidder to twitch skinny sticks of low-grade wood to fuel Laidlaw’s plant, or any other. That’s just poor economics. So please! No more impassioned pleas for “helping the poor loggers”. Come up with a sustainable plan for timber harvesting and they will be more than satisfied and able to plan their involvement in their chosen professions and quite willing to make those investments.

The larger question is what is the wood supply? Frankly no one has the irrefutable data to answer that question. There are bits and pieces of data that can help educate your guess whether the supply is sufficient but it would still be agues. So, consider this string of information.

Coos County is 1.2  million acres (more or less). A recent study by the AMC found about half the county’s timber parcels under some form of conservation easement directing management to production of higher value saw logs on long-term rotations (i.e., less frequent major cuttings using prescribed Timber Stand Improvement plans) basically allowing timber stands to recover from heavy cutting by paper pulp producers in the past decades. One timber resource expert said much of the county is even-aged, immature timber stands about 25-40 years from harvest. Will the speaker make that statement on the record? It’s doubtful given his position in the land use hierarchies of the state. So we’re stuck with overused hyperbole in making economic planning decisions instead of solid data.

To supply presently operating biomass plants in the region (Whitefield and Bethlehem) requires roughly 415,000 tons of wood a year. If we assume that each acre can produce a ton of low grade wood annually about a half million acres are required to satisfy existing need. Add in Laidlaw’s need for 500,000 tons and North Country Renewable Energy (Groveton’s) expressed need for 1.2 million tons and we’re up to 2.11 million tons or 2 million acres producing the average one ton per acre.

Just how big is 2 million acres you ask?

Use the footprint of the White Mountain National Forest for context. It represents a fairly unbroken 800,000 acre chunk of land that runs from Bethel to Lancaster and Randolph to Plymouth. Quite a swath. Now double that footprint and you’re about two thirds of the way to meeting the acreage needs of existing and proposed biomass plants.

Now, mind you we’re assuming each acre is capable of producing a ton of biomass. But is that assumption reasonable? I think not. Let me tell you why.

I recently reviewed an aerial mapping of potential wind turbine sites in the county flown within the last month with snowless conditions. What was striking was the number of evident logging sites where substantial acreage had been heavily logged. Add in the 20,000 acre extraction by TR Dillon in Success and other “hot spots” where heavy logging has taken place and the capacity of the Great North Woods to sustain the present 400,000 ton demand is in doubt, never mind the demand for 5 times that amount.

At the Loggers Mud Season breakfast this past week, reports are filtering out that wood supply and Coos capacity to feed biomass to the new plants is seriously in doubt. Several loggers have told me personally that they are presently supplying chips to Whitefield and Bethlehem but that few of the truckloads are carrying Coos chips. Naturally, wood supply has always been a regional issue with timberlands from Maine and Vermont and below the notches being tapped to make up supply. All well and good but what new demands for wood supplies are being contemplated in those neighboring states and what control do we have over those discussions or plans?

This then becomes a regional issue and not simply a Berlin or Groveton issue. And it becomes an issue where good data is desperately needed to answer the many supply and sustainability questions.

If our goal is to create a sustainable, green and renewable alternative energy industry for Coos County, how can we proceed without the information?

Next time in this space we’ll look at the price point of wood and its highest and best value.

Special thanks again to Peter R. for this guest blog.

Comments

[Dusten]

what a crock, the energy idunstry is worth trillions, the australian governemnt admts this week that a large carbon tax on coal would destroy the idunstry, to remove all the coal oil and gas would destroy the economies, and this why untaxable energy has been kept quiet until now.click on my name there is only one video full specs of a test unit anyone can build and video of it working

[Yopita]

The idea of a communal effrot by parents and community on behalf of the children (and each other) is a nice image. Remembering Halloween 45 to 50 years ago . it was very different. No parents, sometimes no costumes (just a paper bag or a pillow case), and plenty of EGGS! Ahhh, those were the days.BD

[Ann F]

I just wanted to add my comments to the biomass plant. I don't object to the plant itself, I object to it's proposed location. All one has to do is drive down Main St. at Third oopppss showing my age, Peavey St. to see how the chimney interferes with a spectacular site. I would like to see the biomass plant put up with the Prisons. Another option would be on Jericho road.
Berlin has long relyed on the mill. It has been a source of income for many, me included, it fed me, clothed me, put me thru school and married me off. I left to live downstate but returned to raise my children in the bosom of family. I have enjoyed living here, it's family, it's friendly, it's awesomely beautiful but I have no regrets the mill is gone. I can remember walking across the YMCA bridge with my dad when it was so smoggy you couldnt' see ahead of you. That is not missed. It was a vital business for many many years but has reached the end of it's usefulness. To put another mill in the same place keeps us locked into the past not moving into the future. I would love to see one story buildings with high technology businesses in them. As a tax payer I would really like to see more tax paying businesses in place. One that hires maybe 40 people and gives the loggers work is fine but it won't provide the income in Berlin that we need.
Thanks for the opportunity to spout off.
Ann F

[Pete B]

Rocky makes some good points on the wood supply. I guess my thoughts were that the 1.2 MM tons of wood being harvested previously as pulpwood for Berlin & Groveton was mostly low grade wood. To decrease the harvest of low grade wood from 1.2 MM tons to 500,000 tons ( the estimated demand from a 50 MW power station) leaves another 700,000 tons of low grade wood out there. One legitimate question is: was the 1.2MM tons per year a sustainable rate? I don't know. But it without the data in front of me it seems that harvesting 500,000 tons per year of low grade wood, sustanably, in the same "wood basket" is entirely doable. That is only 40% of the previous harvest rate.

As far as loggers being able to make a buck on harvesting only biomass, that would be a tough way to make a living without heavy investment in mechanized harvesting/chipping equipment and large scale clearcutting (like Dillon...). Informed landowners who are into managing their land for the long term try to maximize the value of the wood by trying to grow sawlogs. The pulpwood (now biomass) was a by-product. Landowners want sawlogs, but they still need a market for the lower quality trees. If they just cut the good quality trees (High-Grading) then they end up with nothing but junk wood on their land.

The price of pulpwood ranged from $30-$40 /ton the last couple years the mill was running. I believe that PSNH is paying $25-$30 /ton for biomass at the Schiller station in Portsmouth. Loggers are not going to get rich harvesting biomass at $25/ton, but it is a necessary side market to the saw log harvesting business. It will be a steady 500,000 ton per year demand that will fill in between peaks and valleys of the lumber business.

Anyway this is all beside the point on the issue of re-using the boiler on the mill site. I think that there is widespread agreement that a 50 MW biomass plant would be a good idea anywhere else besides downtown Berlin. All the naysayers I have heard, spreading rumors of ash falling from the sky like Mt St. Helens, just don't want to have to look at the mill running with steam coming out of the stacks. They are looking for a more aesthetically pleasing use for the old mill site.

I'll write more thoughts on that later

[Rocky]

I enjoyed reading Pete's post and most of the scientific references are correct. The one point I would challenge is the wood supply. I dont think anybody has the answer (yet) to the level of harvesting that is sustainable and second, at what price. I don't think you'll find any loggers that are willing to go into a woodlot and harvest strickly low grade hardwoods for the price that power plants can afford to pay. The low grades prices are being subsidized by high grade logs and the hgher/more profitable products. The low grades are weeds that get taken out "while there", but you can't earn a living harvesting just low grades and it takes a whole bunch of time growing high grade timber. The so called weed trees/low grades regenerate better and grow faster than say rock maple, ash or white birch.(To log size) I bet that if a logger had to harvest only low grades for chips the price would have to be around $50/ton for them to make money and at that price most power plants go out of business because of high fuel costs. People like Dillon cut at an unsustainable rate, (short term profit) move on to the next lot with no intention of returning during their lifetime. It's quite different for a region who wishes to make harvesting a sustaiable long term and permanent economic strategy.

[Pete B]

Just a few thoughts here. The biomass boiler, steam turbine combination would be about 30% efficient, as you stated. That would be about the same whether you were firing wood, peat, coal, oil, natural gas,or bagasse. It is neither here nor there. That is all the efficiency you can squeeze out of a thermal power station without going to a combined cycle or co-generation. What makes it better than a coal fired station (especially a 50 year old one) is that the fuel is low luslfur,carbon neutral and the boiler can be fitted with all the latest bells and whistles environmentally to keep SOx, NOx and particulate at a minimum. Any step to wean this country off of foriegn oil is a step in the right direction. As far as low grade wood supply and loggers, until 2006 the Berlin and Groveton mills consumed 1.2 MM tons of low grade wood. The wood was out there and continues to be out there. It was and can continue to be sustainably harvested indefinitely. Those clear cut patches you saw from the air. THEY GROW BACK! If you were to take a plane ride in the '50s, '70s or '90s you would have seen the same thing. So that doesn't sound like a finite resource in my book. Oil is finite, Gas is finite, Coal is finite...Biomass is infinite.

Does our friend Dillon cut harder with a heavier hand than previous owners? Yup. I don't know that anything can be done about that.

Without a demand for that wood the land loses it's value as woodland. Before you know it the large blocks of timber have been subdivided and sold off as building lots for second homes to rich flatlanders. Land is posted,access is denied and guess what.. You might as well be living in Massachusetts.