[kmscon-devel] New York Times on Wood-to-Energy Technologies

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The New York Times  Major Utilities Embrace Wood-to-Energy Technology

WASHINGTON — Even as the EPA considers requiring existing coal-fired
power plants to cut their carbon dioxide output, some utilities have
started to use a decidedly low-tech additive that accomplishes that end:
wood.

Ranging in size from sawdust to chunks as big as soup cans, waste wood from
paper mills, furniture factories and logging operations has been used with
varying levels of success. Minnesota Power, which once generated almost all
of its power from coal and is now trying to convert to one-third renewables
and one-third natural gas, found that co-firing with wood was a quick way
to move an old plant partly to the renewable category.

“We’re finding an emissions improvement benefit, and an economic
benefit,” because the wood is cheaper than coal, said Allan S. Rudeck
Jr., Minnesota Power’s vice president for strategy and planning.

And Minnesota is not the only state taking advantage of the low cost and
low emissions of wood-to-energy technology.  In New Hampshire, about 33,500
homes, or 6.5 percent, heat with wood, compared with about 2.1 percent of
US homes overall, according to US Census figures.

Charlie Niebling, an energy consultant with Innovative Natural Resource
Solutions and former plant manager at New England Wood Pellet, said that
notion of energy was driven home after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, then
again after dual 2005 hurricanes — Katrina and Rita — caused global
spikes in petroleum costs. Importing petroleum products costs the state
about $1 billion a year.

As of last week, pellets — when delivered in bulk — cost more than only
natural gas: $14.98 to produce 1 million BTUs compared with $11.46 for the
cheapest natural gas, according to the Office of Energy and Planning. Cord
wood was at $15.15, fuel oil at $26.07 while electric was the highest at
$43.27 per million BTUs.

Back in Minnesota, Allan S. Rudeck Jr., Minnesota Power’s vice president
for strategy and planning, says “We’re finding an emissions improvement
benefit, and an economic benefit,” because the wood is cheaper than
coal.

For companies like Minnesota Power, co-firing will be one of the leading
options if the E.P.A., which recently proposed limits on carbon emissions
for new plants, follows through on its plan to develop limits for old
ones.

Using modest amounts of wood at a large number of coal plants could be a
relatively quick way to phase in renewable energy. And unlike wind or solar
power electricity from a boiler, wood is easy to schedule and integrate
into the grid.

The E.P.A. is in the midst of “listening sessions” in 11 cities around
the country, to gather ideas from the public about putting carbon limits on
existing plants. Last week it held an eight-hour session in Denver.

Wood does release carbon when fired, as nearly all fuels do. But taking
woody material from forests or farms leaves space for new growth, which
will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it grows. Although some
opponents of using wood say that disrupting forests means added carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere for generations, regulators usually count its use
as zero carbon.

Coal plants are finely engineered, designed to work on one particular kind
of coal, and adding wood can be tricky. But their carbon output, like their
overall efficiency — that is, the amount of coal fired compared with the
amount of electricity generated — has grown worse in many cases in recent
years. Earlier E.P.A. rules that cover emissions of soot, nitrogen oxides
and other pollutants have required plants to install pollution control
equipment that itself consumes a lot of energy.

Many companies, to minimize the loss of capacity, have taken another step
that the E.P.A. would like to encourage: replacing their aging steam
turbines, which often date to the 1970s and 1980s, with more efficient
ones. Turbines take the energy from steam and use it to spin a shaft that
turns a generator.

Plants that have already installed modern turbines cannot get big
improvements from installing even newer ones and may face a bigger
challenge meeting new carbon regulations. Duke Energy, for example,
upgraded many turbines to offset the capacity loss as it added scrubbers.

“A lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been harvested” for
efficiency improvements, said Thomas Williams, a spokesman for Duke. If
Duke and other companies are forced to cut emissions, a crucial question
for them will be what year is selected as the baseline.

“Close to 200 plants have conducted test firings worldwide,” said David
L. Nicholls, a forest products technologist at the United States Forest
Service and a specialist on co-firing, who is based in Sitka, Alaska.

If you would like to find out more, please read the whole article at The
New York Times.  Information included in this piece was also gathered from
an article in The Boston Globe.

This message was brought to you by the friends of Green Energy Solutions
Industries, which trades under the symbol GESI.  The friends of GESI are
friends to all green energy companies, especially those in the
waste-to-energy and wood-to-energy industries.  These technologies not only
reduce the Earth's overall carbon footprint, but utilize energy sources
that also help to clean-up the environment.

GESI is an industry trailblazer in wood-to-energy technologies.  You can
get more information on GESI at Yahoo Finance.

If you aren't a supporter of renewable, green energy, if you are happy to
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