Burning question: Is there enough wood to feed biomass plant?

[ Originally published on: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 ]

Got wood?

That's the question raised by many of those with concerns about the $250 million biomass plant proposed for Greenfield.

In a part of the state that's more than 60 percent forested, there would seem to be plenty to feed the planned 47-megawatt Pioneer Renewable Energy wood-burning power plant.

The state's energy and environmental affairs office gave its OK last month to the project, saying it saw no problem with an annual supply of roughly 500,000 tons of wood -- primarily from 'sustainable' forest-harvesting practices within a 55-mile radius of the site adjacent to the Greenfield Industrial Park. That's an estimated 1,500 tons a day of clean, low-grade forestry residue such as branches, tree tops, stumps and slabs, as well as tree trimming, right-of-way clearing material and trees from urban and suburban land clearing, plus pallets, sawdust, and clean wood scraps from sawmills and furniture factories.

The wood supply issue may be outside the purview of the Greenfield Zoning Board of Appeals when it holds its May 26 hearing on special permit applications for the plant, although the roughly 54 daily tractor-trailer loads may be raised as part of its traffic considerations.

In fact, says project proponent Matthew Wolfe, the long-term wood supply was a key reason his Cambridge-based Madera Energy settled on Greenfield to build the biomass plant.

'There's a big, fat hole in Greenfield,' Wolfe told a public gathering about the project, pointing at a regional map showing available markets for low-grade wood.

A 2008 state 'biomass availability assessment' said the five western counties could yield 750,000 tons of wet or 'green' wood residue, or enough to fuel a 50-to-60 megawatt biomass plant. Including the 14 bordering counties in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the analysis for the state's Division of Energy Resources and Department of Conservation and Recreation found, as much as 6.7 'green tons' are available to supply roughly 500 megawatts -- more than 10 times the output of the proposed Greenfield plant.

But the documents have been challenged by critics of the Greenfield plant, who worry that the power plant's appetite could outstrip 'sustainable' wood supplies from forests and lead to 'clear-cutting' and eventually having to substitute construction and demolition debris.

'It is not a Trojan horse for dirty wood,' Wolfe told a MEPA meeting in April. 'It will not lead to clear cutting on a wholesale basis, as we think about it: thousands and thousands of acres being mowed down like a lawn. That is absolutely, positively not the case.'

Yet Chris Matera, a Northampton civil engineer whose Massachusetts Forest Watch Web site screams, 'The Massachusetts Chainsaw Massacre,' argued differently.

At the April state meeting, he contended that biomass plants proposed or contemplated for western Massachusetts could require 2.9 million tons of wood a year, about six times what's now harvested.

'Forests will be cut for this. It's not waste wood. It doesn't exist,' Matera told the state officials, adding that once the supply of clean wood is exhausted, construction and demolition debris would be substituted.

Again, Wolfe explained that to be certified for the Renewable Energy Credits needed to get financing for the project, he will have to certify that only clean wood is burned, with on-site inspection to assure that's the case.

Other critics also have poked holes in the state resource assessment, including one person at the MEPA meeting asking why annual forest growth and harvest in surrounding states was shown to be three times higher than for Massachusetts.

'That's off the charts,' he said, questioning the validity of the assessment. 'How can you have such an anomaly?' There was no answer to his question, but there was an acknowledgement by the state's top environmental official that there needs to be a broader review of sustainable forest management practices in the Massachusetts.

On his www.maforests.org Web site, and in handouts he distributes at meetings about the plant, critic Matera has numerous photos taken after clear-cutting operations in state forests, with a charge of state policies 'devastating state forests.'

But the clear-cutting story isn't that clear cut, says state Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Rick Sullivan. 'They can be devastating pictures,' he said, adding that cutting woodlands can be a scene that's ugly and that the issue of clear-cutting is controversial. But he said clear-cutting was done on 1,000 of the state's 280,000 acres of woodland over the past five or six years, following decades of little wood-lot management.

The Department of Conservation and Recreation, which also regulates forestry practices on private woodlots of 10 acres or more, has launched a public discussion about the future of state forest land and how the various considerations -- recreational, habitat, economic, aesthetic and forest management -- can be balanced for the future.

But he said the state is 'absolutely not' encouraging the sale of wood from its lands to fuel biomass plants, even though it is encouraging development of renewable energy projects to cut dependence on electric generation using fossil fuels.

'If you look back at the '80s, we're cutting less than we were then, with much better (forest management) plans in place,' he said.

Bruce Spencer, a retired forester who managed the Quabbin Reservoir watershed for years, said, 'I think it's a distortion to talk of large-scale clear-cutting, and to say the forest will disappear.' But Spencer, who promotes building a smaller biomass plant in the region to help small woodlot owners like himself find a market for low-grade wood, added that he has other concerns about the Greenfield proposal.

'I think supply is very important, and I think it's the key issue,' he said.

Spencer's concern is that the Greenfield proposal would make use of tree tops, which he and forestry experts like natural resource conservation professor Matthew Kelty of the University of Massachusetts believe should be left to decay in the forest to avoid depleting the soil of calcium and other nutrients.

'Unfortunately, experts disagree on how much you can take from the forests, what you take and what do you leave,' said Spencer. He also said it was 'absurd' to think fuel providers would find it profitable to haul the material from more than about a 25-miles radius of Greenfield, cutting into the potential economic fuel supply.

Testimony to the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office that Spencer wrote for the citizens' group North Quabbin Energy said, 'A $30/ton (price) for delivered biomass does not allow for careful well managed forest that rely on smaller/lighter logging equipment needed in the selection method of silviculture. The typical biomass operation presently viewed in southern New Hampshire and Maine is a wide open forest and park-like with no slash.' It adds, 'We believe this 47MW electric plant is too large for our fractured (forest) ownership, not possible with a selection method of silviculture, and therefore likely to fail for lack of cheap fuel.'

Yet other wood-lot owners favor the proposal.

A representative of W.D. Cowls, the largest private woodlot owner in western Massachusetts, told April's MEPA gathering the Pioneer Energy project would fill a need for buying 'a large amount of wood for which there is no market' -- chips and bark from its Amherst sawmill as well much of the woody debris left from last winter's ice storm.

'No forest landowner is going to manage his/her woodlands to grow biomass,' Gregory Cox of Hawley, former executive director of the Massachusetts Forestry Association, who owns about 150 acres of woodland, wrote state officials about the Greenfield project last month. 'If you're growing timber, you will put your effort into growing the best trees, and biomass is simply a market to let you remove the competing lower quality trees in a more cost-effective manner. & A biomass market will make it easier to deal with an outbreak of a destructive insect or disease like the Asian long-horned beetle & I think that a biomass energy plant would be an important resource for the Franklin County region.'

You can reach Richie Davis at: rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 269

 

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