Truckee biomass unit would curtail the number of U.S. Forest Service control burns
By Kathryn Reed
TAHOE CITY – If the biomass facility that is proposed to be built between Truckee and Tahoe City comes to fruition, it will mean the U.S. Forest Service would be burning less material that is left over from fuel reduction projects.
It also means energy will be created and put into the state’s grid.
What makes this system different than most biomass facilities is that it would be a gasification unit.
This is what the proposed biomass facility would look like. Rendering/Wood Rodgers
“It heats the wood without burning it. You don’t have the smoke,” Gerry Haas with the Placer County planning division told planning commissioners last week. He said the plant would create a thermo-chemical reaction.
The two people who spoke at the public hearing at Granlibakken conference center had mixed things to say about the Cabin Creek Biomass Facility project. The public has until Sept. 10 at 5pm to submit comments on the draft environmental impact report.
One person who spoke would like the plant to make biodiesel and do more than what is proposed. A spokeswoman for the Sierra Business Council said her group is worried federal air quality standards will not be met and would like a baseline established before the facility is built.
Placer County supervisors in 2007 adopted a plan to deal with excess wood materials.
Originally, Kings Beach had been targeted as the site for the biomass facility. However, vocal opposition nixed that idea. That is when the Eastern Regional Landfill and Materials Recovery Facility entered the discussion. It is two miles south of Truckee off Highway 89.
What is being proposed is an 11,000-square-foot, two-story structure to convert the wood waste into energy. It would be a 2-megawatt facility.
The infrastructure is in place to carry the energy that would be generated. It would go along a transmission line crossing the Truckee River to the main line.
“The U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit supports the development of a biomass facility close to Lake Tahoe. We’ve worked closely with Placer County to find ways to increase biomass utilization,” USFS spokeswoman Cheva Heck told Lake Tahoe News. “Over the next 10 years, we will be implementing an aggressive hazardous forest fuels reduction program on national forest system lands around the lake, and a biomass facility located nearby increases our options for eliminating these fuels, while helping to address energy needs.”
If the Cabin Creek facility is built, it would be considered a pilot project, according to Haas. He said it’s possible another one could be built at Forest Hill.
Questions I thought of:
1. How big of a range would they be able to take wood in from?
2. What does it smell like? I’m assuming there must be some emittance.
3. Does anything get returned to the land? The ash after the burn? If not, what are the long term consequences of this?
There is not enough fuel(slash) in the Basin to sustain this project for any length of time. This was determined by the Angora Fire Commission back in 2008. The cost to build and maintain would be out weigh the benefits of a biomass plant within the Basin. This is a pet project of one individual who works for Placer County. The cost and additional traffic of trucks hauling slash through the Basin would be an additional strain on our roadways. The Loyalton biomass plant has never operated at full capacity based on the facts alone. The USFS will not commit to providing slash as well as funding the cost of removal for a period of time. Other USFS districts would have to commit to supply and they will not do this. This project should not proceed.
As someone who has dealt with this issue for years (since before the Presidential Summit in 1997), with work in multiple Regions of the U.S.F.S., the Research Stations, and the Department of Energy (National Renewable Energy Lab), I can comment on both of the above responses:
To CATC: (1)They would be able to take biomass from as far away as transit allows (noting that transport has always been a ‘deal-breaker’ for the Forest Service before). It would of course also depend on how much space for storage they have; either way it would be much better than leaving the more than 1,000 ‘piles’ out in the forest as is now the case. It is much shorter than the trip to Loyalton, which is what was considered before; (2)it has no discernible smell, as most gasification is at 1800 degrees or more (meaning essentially “no smoke, no air quality problems”). What is missing in most of the ‘community input’ is that no one in this business would in their right mind spend millions of dollars in R & D without first addressing the air quality issue, immediate deal-breaker that that always is;(3)As described, I’m not sure what residue is left, but, for example, “char” is a possible outcome, which has tremendous soil improvement capacity. To offer another “example”, fly ash comes from the residue of coal-fired power plants, and is used to supplement or replace portland cement in concrete, as it is structurally stronger. In short, I’m sure there will be a beneficial use, once one is found – my guess is in the char range.
To Mark: All vegetative biomass has embedded energy: it’s simplest explanation would be as the fire in your woodstove; NREL works with embedded energy issues as ‘wasted’ until a correct use is ascertained, such as conversion to energy (geothermal uses core earth heat)- so this direction has “socially redeeming value”, in the same way that food waste need not go to a landfill; it is better used as compost or as soil amendment, in the same vein.
At the Presidential Summit, Agriculture Secretary Glickman used the Forest Service’s own projections in saying that at least 5% of the Basin’s forest needed treatment (that would be almost 10,000 acres/year)- meaning that the current concern over catastrophic fire is very current (and in all 10 western states, I ight add) due to the continually untreated areas (especially in the urban interface). As some Regions don’t have any way to put a $$ value on biomass (they’ve historically considered it as “unmerchantable”), it is then incumbent on the private R & D sector to look into its’ viable use, which may, by the way, be an avenue for economic relief to the many mill towns in the Sierras that have shut down.
Loyalton has not been operable due to the shortage of available biomass (it’s owned by Sierra Pacific Industries, the largest forest landowner in CA)- it is more due to the cost of transport, given how far away it is from the most detrimental places. That the Forest Service does not commit is more due to their desire to place a heightened $$ value on something they’ve always considered worthless – which is of course not the case now. Time for a re-think. . .
The ill-considered Basin projects (STHS, the Carson City project, and this one also, due only to the issue of neighborhood traffic, not technical feasibility) can easily be countermanded by projects elsewhere in the country.
My favorite is in Nederland, CO (in the foothills above Boulder, where their elementary school burned down, leaving them with a burnt shell. The CO Dept. of Education built them a new school, leaving the hulk of the previous school unused – the town then planned their own Community Center, and, as the former school had operated on about 29 MW/annum, they designed a 30 MW facility, USING ALL FOREST WASTE AS THEIR POWER SOURCE, in its’ own building tandem to the school. I toured that facility with a number of Regional Foresters, the DOE, and Congressional folks years ago – and improvement to breaking the cellulosic bond has since improved greatly. . .
Given that the Basin is embarking on a 15 year Forest Restoration Plan, a viable and scientifically-vetted economic answer may lie right in front of all of us. . .given time to overcome earlier incorrect biases that plagued all other Basin projects.
Refer again to the comment about no R & D effort (and there are many now) wasting resources without doing due diligence on air quality – finding a viable solution to the immense amount of thinning about to go on will use way more resources than to simply make this one work, to refine its’ potential for being done again (and then again).
NREL measures biomass in both BTU’s/lb and joules/gram, and has energy values for all vegetative species, indigenous or otherwise. Those can then be translated into $$ valuations, as they do. That is the essence of a business plan.
This project should finally be completed. . .
A balanced authoritative comment by someone who knows what he’s talking about. Thank you Gary Bowen.
I am in favor of the Plant being built
I thought this made perfect sense at the Kings Beach location.
I think many people want heat, power, and all the amenities a community provides, bat at the same time do not want to develop anything.
We have to smell burning forest all summer and fall from intended or unintended fire.
But oh no not a power plant that uses wood and brush from the surrounding community!
I don’t get it?