Increased global forest density necessitates more forest management

Environmental Research Web published a report last month based on U.S. and European research concluding that global "Forest Density is Increasing." This substantiates the argument that Indirect Land Use Change is a speculative theory because increased forest density can mitigate the impacts of deforestation - particularly in large forests like Brazil's. If we can sustainably grow and manage forests that have increased density or develop best practices that improve the health and yield of forests (just as we can with food and energy crops) then minor variations in the use of acres becomes a meaningless concern.

Unfortunately, many in the North American environmental community will conclude that the study results prove something else. They believe that, by obstructing forest industry development and enforcing a more laissez-faire attitude toward forests, that forests will cure themselves of the "exploitive invasion" by the forest products industry.

Almost everyone agrees that that an end to active fire suppression decades ago in North America has resulted in more forest density. However, the challenge and responsibility of maintaining forest health is more important now than ever before. Is it safe to have unmanaged forests with 400-600 trees per acre when, properly thinned, it is much healthier and fire resistant at 100?

What is the value of a carbon sink if it (and its diverse habitats) can be lost to megafires and beetle kill? These disasters have grown substantially since 2000 in North America - in acreage and intensity. One can believe that "natural conditions" will fix forests but if that same person believes that 39% more carbon in the atmosphere compared to the pre-Industrial era compromises natural conditions then a laissez-faire attitude toward forest health is pure negligence.

Increased density of our forests makes it imperative that we exercise more forest management. The academics (UC/Berkeley), agencies (USDA/Forest Service and the Woody Biomass Utilization Group), and associations I belong to (TAPPI, SAF, ACORE) all tell me that the key to improving forest management is building more "infrastructure." They define infrastructure to mean forest products facilities, including biopower plants and biorefineries, that can convert forest thinnings into products, power, and fuels.

These products that have the added carbon cycle benefit of reducing greenhouse gases from combusting coal and oil distillates. More infrastructure will also provide important disaster response alternatives for managing forest salvage from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts - all anticipated to rise with global climate change.

I wrote about a 2008 study of 4 wildfires in California and the carbon consequences of active vs. inactive forest management as carried out by private vs. federal managers (see Links between California Wildfires and GHG emissions). The data analysis from this study raises some important questions relevant to our perception of the best way to manage forests before and after high density fuelwood accumulation.

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technorati BIOstock, biomass, agriculture, forestry

Evergreen no more?

"We must always consider the environment and people together, as though they are one, because the human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on Earth."
- Jim Petersen, Editor, Evergreen Magazine 1989

So opens the Evergreen website, an online resource for archives of the the Evergreen magazine. Started in 1986, articles about forestry, biological diversity, forest health, and wildfires have graced the pages of this singular, often plaintive voice in the forest wilderness. An example...

"To see what will happen next in eastern Oregon, look at what is already happening in northern Arizona and New Mexico. Federal forests in both states have been devastated by catastrophic wildfire in recent years. But because there is no wood processing infrastructure left in the Southwest, neither state possesses the structural nor financial means to mediate their forest health problems. And until the Congress decides to stop paying environmental groups to sue the socks off the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, there is zero chance that new infrastructure investments will be made in the region, despite quite valiant Forest Service efforts to recruit wood processing businesses.

"Many environmentalists know this, and are worrying aloud on their own websites about the loss of credibility they are suffering as urban support for thinning in at risk forests tops 80% nationally. While we applaud their more conciliatory voices, environmentalists have no way of controlling their own radical fringes."

The magazine preceded the establishment Evergreen Foundation whose mission is to help advance public understanding and support for science-based forest policies and practices. I became aware of this publication and its editor, Jim Petersen, when I received a copy of a speech Jim gave to the Montana Loggers Association last week (available for download here). He introduced his speech with the same combination of chagrin and optimism that motivates me.

"So much is at stake and so few seem to get it – the “it” here being the fact that Montana’s timber industry is teetering on the brink of collapse at the precise same moment when it ought to be laying the cornerstone for its own bright future.

"I want to talk about the elephants in the room that no one else ever seems to want to talk about. This being the case, I decided on the following title: “When you are up to your armpits in elephants, it is difficult to remember that your original job was to drain the swamp."

"And no mistake, we are all mired in a swamp. And we are up to our armpits in elephants. But I think I finally see a way out of the muck and mire that has been sucking us into the abyss for so many years. And the way out – the route to a better future – is biomass. So I am going to talk about biomass too.

Jim lists 22 different elephants. Here are a few of the most interesting:

"Elephant No. 1 is the one that perennially irritates me the most: Congress. It’s bad enough that Congress continues to twiddle its thumbs while the West burns to the ground. Worse though is the current debate over whether to include federal biomass in renewable energy legislation that is slowly making its way through Congress. If you wonder where this insanity begins, I’ll tell you. It begins with an unholy alliance between Elephant No. 2, several large pulp and paper producers, and Elephant No.3, the Natural Resources Defense Council. Elephant No.3 doesn’t want federal biomass to be included in the energy standard because it fears resurgence in the timber industry that it loves to hate. Elephant No. 2, the pulp and paper producers, are in league with Elephant No. 3 because they fear that including federal biomass in the legislation will drive up the price of fiber.

"I’ve got news for Elephant No. 2. Your problem is far more serious than whatever competitive headwinds you may face if federal biomass is included in federal renewable energy legislation. Your problem is that you aren’t competitive on the global pulp and paper stage. You are being eaten alive by Scandinavian companies that are investing billions of dollars in South America, where land, labor and regulatory costs are a fraction of what they are in the U.S.; where pulp mills actually sit in the middle of plantations, not 40 or 50 miles away from them, and where trees reach pulp-size maturity in 5-7 years.

"Imagine my horror on learning that some of the biggest publicly traded forest products companies in the country were working furiously behind the scenes to sabotage the Bush Administration’s Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Why? Because they saw the thinnings that forest restoration would yield as competition for their own wood – and their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders, not the nation’s dead and dying federal forests. It’s the same in pulp and paper. These companies – all of them publicly traded – have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, not to you, not to me and not to the economic or social well being of our country. Those fiduciary responsibilities, those trust obligations, reside in our elected officials."

"Some people believe this new elephant – he is Elephant No. 6 – is a good for nothing slacker and doesn’t care if he ever brings us any wood. But I think they are wrong. I think Elephant No. 6 – we’ll call him Woody for lack of a better name – I think this new elephant whose last name is Biomass would like to show us what he can do, if only the Congress will let him.

"It is long past time for the Congress to give Woody Biomass, No. 6 in our string of elephants, the legitimate chance he needs to show us what he can do in our dead and dying federal forests. Let’s stop fiddling around on 10 or 20 or 100-acre show-and-tell plots; let’s put Woody to work on tracts of federal forestland that are large enough to make a difference both ecologically and economically.

"Some of you have heard me say that I think it is time for our nation to return its national forests to Indian tribes from whom we stole them more in the 1800s. I still believe this, but I don’t think it will happen in the near term, if ever. Nor do I believe that the Forest Service is to blame for our current state of affairs. The Forest Service is a public agency – albeit one that has wandered far from its original mission. Today, it serves at the behest of political parties and special interest groups that have vastly different visions for the future of our nation’s publicly-owned forests.

"My cynicism aside, the climate change debate gives us an unprecedented opportunity to argue the case for managing our federal forests in ways that increase their carbon storage capacity, no matter its source, no matter the guilty party, no matter the amount.

"I want to have this debate with every environmentalist in the country, because if we are really serious about replacing air polluting fossil fuels with lesser polluting renewable fuels, including solar, wind and woody biomass, and if we are serious about reducing CO2 levels in our atmosphere, we simply cannot ignore this next elephant that is standing quietly in our midst, waiting to be recognized. He is Elephant No. 13, and he possesses the miraculous ability to transform carbon dioxide into wood fiber through a process called photosynthesis – a process that powers itself with the free, non-polluting energy of the sun. He can thus increase the carbon storage capacity of our federal forests.

"Yet despite his miraculous powers, our Photosynthesis Elephant will need our help, and he will need the help of No. 6, our new Forest Service elephant. Working as a team, which is what elephants do best, they can design perpetual thinning and stand tending programs capable of increasing the carbon storage capacity of our federal forests while, at the same time, decreasing the billions of tons of pollutants that wildfires spew into our earth’s atmosphere every year.

"I emphasize the word “perpetual” because we cannot thin our forests once and expect that they will magically hold themselves in perfect balance until the end of time. They won’t – because there is no steady state in nature. Chaos is constant, and everywhere. But we can limit nature’s wild swings by dedicating ourselves to the constant task of forest stewardship – the thinning and stand tending work that we must do if our forests are to provide the long list of things that we Americans want and need."

I highly recommend reading the Spring 2006 issue of Evergreen with the feature article written by Dave Skinner titled "Ring of FIre." It is difficult to read about the demise of forest product mills at the same time that the forests are so unhealthy. Even worse is the realization that this article was written a full two years before the current economic collapse - which imperils the future of all the mills that remain.

What will become of the forests? What impact there be on the communities that have been stewards of our forests? What will be the climate change consequences of this demise?

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technorati biomass, forestry

CA Draft Scoping Plan comment: Sustainable Forests

This is one of a series of comments submitted to the California Air Resources Board for their draft version of the California Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan. Other BIOenergy BlogRing comments are linked here:
• Challenge the Status Quo
• Recycling and Waste
• Sustainable Forests
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The ill health of our forests is a statewide catastrophe. We are witnessing deforestation by wildfire, bug infestation, and decay that consumes our forests without adequate reforestation efforts. It is estimated by the California Forest Foundation that we are losing over 30,000 acres of timberlands (an area the size of San Francisco) each year to brushlands.

Nationally, six of the seven worst fire seasons on record have occurred within the last eight years with some fires lasting months and covering hundreds of thousands of acres. Just four wildfires that were recently studied were found to emit the GHG equivalent of adding 7 million cars to our streets for one year.

The smoke and emissions from wildfires are greenhouse gases that we can see, smell, and touch as ash and particulate matter is strewn across the landscape. But this is only the start of the GHG problem. Decay contributes 3 times as much greenhouse gas as the fire itself.

The goal of reducing 5 MMTC02E by 2020 seems woefully inadequate considering the GHG from the combustion of just one wiidfire (2007 Moonlight Fire in Plumas National Forest) which burned 65,000 acres has been documented to have generated 4.9 MMT GHG. Unmanaged treatment would add an additional 15 MMT GHG according to a study by the California Forest Foundation. If wildfire trends continue on their current trajectory, we will have to see much greater reductions to maintain the forest managed GHG sequestration defined in the Scoping Plan.

There are forest management practices that can and should be implemented that would mitigate the greenhouse gas impact of these fires while reducing the ferocity of future fires. These practices are not mentioned in the Scoping Plan and I'll list them here:

1 - We need to thin our most vulnerable forests.

Recent reports of a thousand fires in California spotlight the urgency of the problem - which is neither the lightning that sparks the fires nor the lack of firefighting resources to fight the blazes. The real problem is the density of the number of trees with undergrowth - estimated to be 4-10 times their historic profile - on our largely unmanaged forests.

In 2003, the U.S. Congress passed the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) allocating $750 million dollars in federal funds to thin approximately 20 million acres nationally. Thinned forests contain the spread of wildfires.

Due to resource allocation to fight forest fires, answer environmentalist challenges (729 lawsuits between 1989-2003), and the resultant bureaucratic inertia only 77,000 acres have been thinned.

Thinning forests won't reduce the incidence of fires, but it would significantly reduce their size and GHG consequences.

2 - We need to salvage wood from impacted forests.

Reducing the biomass of dead and dying trees would go far to mitigating the GHG impacts of wildfires since decay contributes three times the GHG as the original fire itself. Large diameter wood could be converted into saw logs and building materials that sequester carbon in energy efficient homes. Scrap wood could be used to cleanly generate green electricity and convert into carbon-neutral biofuels reducing our GHG from fossil fuels.

3 - We need to replant our devastated forests.

From 2001 to 2007, over 143,500 acres of forestland outside wilderness owned by the federal government has not been replanted and has been left to turn into brush.

Following the 1992 Cleveland Fire in the Eldorado National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service replanted some lands, and left some untouched in an experimental ecoplot. Today, trees stand more than 17 feet tall on replanted lands, but brush dominates the untreated ecoplot.

Unlike government-owned lands, private forest landowners quickly remove dead trees and other fuels for additional fires and then replant. It is a part of their enduring legacy for their children.

CARB needs to incorporate these common sense steps into the Scoping Plan otherwise the status quo will prevail. CARB needs to show leadership in fighting bureaucratic inertia caused by public resistance to necessary change in forest management. These problems will worsen in the midst of compounding global warming factors. As the Plan so clearly states "Future climate impacts will exacerbate existing wildfire and pest problems in the Forest sector."

We can ill afford to lose the carbon sequestering forests of our state.

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technorati biomass, forestry

California's Target for Forest Carbon Reduction

The California Air Resources Board is responsible for implementing the state's AB32 Global Warming Solutions Act. It's first step is to provide a Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan that outlines the reduction goals for achieving a reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

One of the goals is the reduction of 5 million tons/year of CO2 from forests using sustainable management practices. It is no secret that California can profit from better management of both its private and public forest lands. But as documented in studies from the California Forest Foundation, wildfires in America are at an all-time high and trending higher. Unless aggressive changes take place, like implementing forest management programs funded by the federal 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act, greenhouse gases may well outpace the reductions stipulated in the plan.

Here is the specific text in the Scoping Plan that stipulate the Sustainable Forest portion.

---------------------------
Sustainable Forests

Preserve forest sequestration and encourage the use of forest biomass for sustainable energy generation.

The 2020 target for California’s forest lands is to achieve a 5 MMTCO2E reduction through sustainable management practices, including reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and the avoidance or mitigation of land-use changes that reduce carbon storage. California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection has the regulatory authority to implement the Forest Practice Act to provide for sustainable management practices and, at a minimum, to maintain current carbon sequestration levels. The federal government must do the same for lands under its jurisdiction in California. California forests are now a net carbon sink. The 2020 target would provide a mechanism to help ensure that this carbon stock is not diminished over time. The 5 MMTCO2E emission reduction target is set equal to the current estimate of the net emission reduction from California forests. As technical data improve, the target can be recalibrated to reflect new information.

California’s forests will play an even greater role in reducing carbon emissions for the 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals. Forests are unique in that planting trees today will maximize their sequestration capacity in 20 to 50 years. As a result, near-term investments in activities such as planting trees will help us reach our 2020 target, but will play a greater role in reaching our 2050 goals.

Monitoring carbon sequestered on forest lands will be necessary to implement the target. The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, working with the Resources Agency, the Air Resources Board, and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection would be tasked with developing a monitoring program, improving greenhouse gas inventories, and determining what actions are needed to meet the 2020 target for the Forest sector. Future climate impacts will exacerbate existing wildfire and pest problems in the Forest sector. These problems will create new uncertainties in reducing emissions and maintaining sequestration levels over the long-term requiring more creative strategies for adapting to these changes. In the short term, focusing on sustainable management practices and land-use issues is a practical approach for moving forward.

Future land use decisions will play a role in reaching our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals for all sectors. Loss of forest land to development increases greenhouse gas emissions because less carbon is sequestered. Avoiding or mitigating such conversions will support efforts to meet the 2020 goal. When significant changes occur, the California Environmental Quality Act is a mechanism providing for assessment and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Biomass fuels will also play a role in the expansion of renewable energy sources but will be accounted for in the Energy sector. Similarly, no reductions are yet attributed to future fuels management strategies, but that accounting will be done following implementation. Public investments to purchase and preserve forests and woodlands would also provide reductions that will be accounted for as projects are funded. Urban forest projects can provide the dual benefit of carbon sequestration and shading to reduce air conditioning load. The Forest sector is already a source of voluntary reductions that would not otherwise occur. ARB has already adopted a methodology to quantify reductions from forest projects, and will be considering additional quantification methodologies later this year. Table 11 summarizes the emission reductions from the forest measure.




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technorati BIOblog, BIOstock, biomass, agriculture, forestry

Woody Biomass: Fuel for Wildfires

This article contains the text and some images from the first half of a speech I presented at the Energy from Biomass and Waste conference in Pittsburgh, PA on September 27. It leads into the second half of the presentation titled Woody Biomass: Feedstock for BioEnergy which describes the existing and emerging technologies that can utilize woody biomass for the production of bioenergy - heat, steam, electricity, and biofuels. Many of the statistics and photos come from an excellent Forest Foundation publication titled Protecting Communities and Saving Forests.

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Woody Biomass: Fuel for Wildfires

I believe that the conversion of biomass to energy represents not only a sustainable, clean alternative to fossil fuel energy but that implementing these emerging technologies can help us solve environmental and ecological challenges of the new millennium.

This presentation will focus on just one environmental challenge - wildfires in the continental U.S. - and how a robust woody biomass conversion industry can provide tools to lessen the threat to our forests.

There are over 10 million private forest owners in the U.S. Although you could say that the country experienced “deforestation” during its early development, the acreage of forests have not diminished at all during the last 100 years. Forests have provided fuel and created great industries for furniture, construction, and paper - industries that sequester carbon.

Unfortunately, these industries that are now stagnating and, in some cases, staggering under the multiple pressures of cheap imports, crusades against forest use, and timberland sell-offs due to skyrocketing real estate prices.

Added to these pressures is the appropriation of more lands to public ownership shifting responsibility to management by the USDA Forest Service.

Some groups seek to preserve forests, biodiversity, and wildlife habitats by severely limiting access by the forest product industries and, through litigation, micromanaging the public forest services charged with insuring forest health.
I contend that it is simply not economically feasible or sustainable for public agencies to take proper care of forests under these conditions.

Forest health has suffered greatly from wildfires and bug infestations.

Wildfires and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
We all know that healthy forests are capable of sequestering vast amounts of greenhouse gases which is a leading cause of global warming.

But we are just starting to recognize that forests can emit vast amounts of GHG through burning and decaying. Here are some numbers pulled together by the California Air Resources Board comparing the average emissions of major geographic sectors. Notice that wildfire emissions dwarf the volume from the other sources combined!

Satellite photographs taken during the last four years of wildfire’s devastating impacts on public lands provide clear evidence of the extent of this travesty.

In Congressional testimony Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico testified that when the Hayman Fire burned in Colorado in 2002, NASA scientists estimated that the fire was emitting more carbon dioxide in one day than all the vehicles in the United States emitted in a week. It lasted 14 days.

Since 2002 mega-fires have gotten worse.

In 2003 the San Diego Cedar Fire (click to enlarge) was the largest in California history lasting 8 days and consuming an area half the size of Rhode Island. Here is a satellite photo of the emissions - so dense that air traffic control towers in L.A. and San Diego were closed for a period of time.


Simultaneously, a fire was burning in the San Bernardino Mountains, just east of L.A. It lasted two weeks and destroyed more than 1,000 other homes. Fortunately it stopped before reaching resort towns near Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear, shown in the upper right corner. If it had it would have decimated evergreen trees that were already sick, dead, or dying from bark beetle infestations - which, incidentally, is what happened in Big Bear two weeks ago. The lakeside community of Fawnskin had to be evacuated by the 15,000 acre fire. The smoke plume from this fire reached far north into Nevada.

Here is what a burned forest looks like (click to enlarge) - charred remains stripped of its leaves and pine needles and in active decay. According to the Forest Foundation the impact of wildfires does not end with the smoke. During decay trees emit about 300% more greenhouse gases than what was emitted during the fire.

Most of the charred remains need to be removed and the lands replanted. Unfortunately, “Nearly four years after fires burned more than 133,000 acres of national forest land in California, less than one percent of those acres have been replanted.”

Just Monday, Senator Craig of Idaho gave testimony in Congress stating that over $2 Billion has been spent this year fighting forest fires while less than $600 million has been spent on preventing them.

Indeed, 2007 has seen a startling upsurge in mega-fires. The Angora Fire, a 3,100 acre blaze in South Lake Tahoe, was responsible for emitting the equivalent of 143,000 cars for an entire year. A blaze 15 times that size devastated Montana.

On July 4th a fire broke out in the Santa Barbara mountains. A week later in Yosemite a satellite photo series was posted throughout the park warning hikers of the health impacts caused by the fire 180 miles away. Driving south through Bakersfield the sun was blotted out by the smoke. The fire lasted another two weeks.

The point is that MORE greenhouse gases are emitted each year from wildfires than we are likely to save in a decade of reduced vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. We can do much better.

Wildfire Impact on Wildlife
They say the road to hell - in this case wildfires - is paved with good intentions. Activists mount crusades and file litigation to protect endangered species which frustrate attempts to fix forest health problems that lead to wildfires.

It is impossible to estimate the impact of wildfires on wildlife but even if the species escape, it leads to overcrowding in surrounding ecologies. But not even mobile animals are immune from the quick moving fires. Like the victims of Pompei most animals die from asphyxiation. Fires can boil streams which kill the fish. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department reports that Georgia’s largest fire ever that started in the Okefenokee Swamp this year was also the most expensive ever for the agency.

The problem of forest density
According to Texas A&M professor Dr. Tom Bonnicksen, a founder of the Forest Foundation, the problem is one of forest density. Our forests have 4 to 10 times as many trees per acre as they used to have. People used to be able to gallop through forests - now it is hard to walk through them or fight fires within them.

Excess forest biomass in the form of small diameter trees, and underbrush create a kindling “ladder of fuel” that helps surface fires spiral up to the crowns of trees. Once there, a fire storm can evolve whipped by winds to spread rapidly in all directions.

Public agencies waste precious funds to fight the wildfires - the symptoms of unhealthy forests - rather than invest it in efforts to restore and manage forest health through thinning. When asked what the biggest hurdle is to deploying thinning programs that are important to restoring forest health, field Forest Service planners say "infrastructure." Without forest product industries to convert the woody biomass to carbon sequestering products and bioenergy, there is no where to store the collected woody biomass and no economically sustainable way to help pay for the program.

To restore forests to a healthy condition, Dr. Bonnicksen recommends a three step, economically sustainable solution that involves private industry who would restore and maintain forest stewardship as part of their operating overhead.
1. First they would harvest decaying biomass
2. Then reforest to a historic model specific to the forest, and
3. Third mechanically thin vulnerable forests of woody biomass as part of their stewardship.

The USDA Forest Service could provide oversight of the program.

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The followup presentation is titled Woody Biomass: Feedstock for BioEnergy

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technorati BIOstock, biomass, forestry

Japanese wood-to-ethanol facility uses Arkenol process

Among the many technologies under development for the conversion of biomass into cellulosic ethanol is concentrated acidic hydrolysis. Simply put, the process separates the biomass into two main constituents: cellulose and hemicellulose (the main building blocks of plant life) and lignin (the "glue" that holds the building blocks together), converts the cellulose and hemicellulose to sugars, ferments them and purifies the fermentation liquids into products.

Arkenol Biomass feedstocks include:
• agricultural residues (straws, corn stalks and cobs, bagasse, cotton gin trash, palm oil wastes, etc.),
• crops grown specifically for their biomass (grasses, sweet sorghum, fast growing trees, etc.),
• paper (recycled newspaper, paper mill sludge's, sorted municipal solid waste, etc.),
• wood wastes (prunings, wood chips, sawdust, etc.), and
• green wastes (leaves, grass clippings, vegetable and fruit wastes, etc.).

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Izumi Arkenol Ethanol Facility
Since 2002 NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Center) /JGC of Japan has been using Arkenol concentrated acid-hydrolysis technology to perfect a continuous stream biomass-to-ethanol conversion process (initially using wood chips). Based in Izumi, Japan the facility touts the following:

Milestones Completed
• Full integration (vs batch processing) of the Arkenol concentrated acid-hydrolysis system using waste wood chips as feedstock, operational since 2002
• Cellulose conversion efficiencies stable at 70%, with optimization to 80%
• Sulfuric acid recovery at over 97% with reconcentration to 75% in continual use since 2002 resulting in minimum make-up acid requirement
• Lignin combustion testing completed successfully verifying use of lignin as solid fuel
• JGC-developed flash fermentation offers significant operating cost savings
• Uses NREL developed rec. Z. mobilis (under Arkenol license) in fixed bed and S. cereviscae to produce ethanol at 95% and above
• Capacity of continuous ethanol production raised from 100 liters/day to a total of 300 liters/day in March 2004
• Uses first commercial membrane distillation and purification system supplied by Mitsui with significant operating cost savings over conventional (molecular sieve) technology
• Ethanol produced used by Japanese Government program for engine drivability tests and materials coupon tests

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BlueFire Ethanol Identifies Southern California Landfill as Initial Location in the U.S. for Commercialization of Cellulose Ethanol Technology

BlueFire Ethanol, Inc. was established to deploy the commercially ready, patented, and proven Arkenol Technology Process of concentrated acid hydrolysis for the profitable conversion of cellulosic ("Green Waste") waste materials to ethanol.

(Bluefire plans to) build and operate an integrated biorefinery using cellulosic feedstock for the production of ethanol. The BlueFire biorefinery is proposed to be located at an existing landfill site in Southern California.

BlueFire's Southern California Biorefinery will process 700 tons of green waste and other cellulosic waste material per day into 24 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol per year with projected revenues of about $55 million and operating income of approximately $25 million per year. The proposed landfill location has been in existence since 1986 accepting approximately 10,000 tons per day of waste from Southern California Counties.


technorati bioenergy, biorefinery, bioconversion, cellulosic, biofuels, catalyst, ethanol

Woody Biomass-to-Ethanol Demonstration Plant Contracted

New York is starting to put some teeth into its plans to position the state as a leader in cellulosic ethanol development. It has agreed to help finance the establishment of a biomass-to-ethanol demonstration facility in Rochester, New York with the collaborative support of Mascoma Corporation and Genencor, a leading industrial biotechnology company that develops innovative enzymes.

Most interesting to me is the range of feedstock that will be demonstrated - "The facility is expected to operate using a number of New York State agricultural and/or forest products as biomass, including paper sludge, wood chips, switch grass and corn stover." Demonstrating proficiency and high yield from any of these feedstocks would enhance further investment and development for not only these collaborators but also other developers in allied technologies.

This announcement is significant for a number of other reasons - the bioconversion process to be demonstrated (enzymatic hydrolysis); the location (near chilly, urban Rochester, New York); the investment structure ($14.8 million state support, $5.2 million from the developer); the industry/education involvement of International Paper/Cornell University/Clarkson U.; and the endorsement by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) - which in my state of California has been equivocal in its support of similar waste-to-energy initiatives.

To learn more and read the press release click HERE.


technorati bioenergy, investment, venture, cellulosic, biofuels, enzymes, ethanol

Colusa Completes Successful Rice Straw Harvest

Agricultural waste is plentiful in many parts of the U.S. that do not produce corn. Each kind of waste is a potential source of biomass for conversion. Some companies are developing vertical specializations focused on a certain biostock to harvest, deliver, and biorefine into biofuels and other marketable products.

One such company is Colusa Biomass Energy Corporation (CBEC) named after a rice-producing county north of Sacramento, California. In a recent press release, Colusa announced that they have achieved better than expected yields from their harvesting of rice straw - the waste leftover from rice cultivation. They will break ground in 2007 on a biorefinery to process the rice straw into ethanol and other by-products.

There is a strong need in this state to convert rice straw because farmers are precluded by law from burning it in the fields, which was the customary practice. California produces about 18% of the rice grown in the United States; about 550,000 acres annually. Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Missouri also produce large quantities of rice. By focusing on this one feedstock, Colusa is developing an expertise that is marketable in many regions of the world - significantly in Asia.

Here is the content of their press release...

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Colusa Biomass Energy Completes an Industry First - Waste Rice Straw Harvest Preparing for Ethanol

Colusa Biomass Energy Corporation (CLME.PK) today announced the successful completion of its first-ever rice straw harvesting operation in Colusa County, California. Field Operations Manager Rick Nannen said, "Yields of rice straw were very significantly higher than expected, showing that our specialized equipment and field practices result in highly efficient collection of biomass."

CBEC announced that it had collected 6,800 tons of rice straw in a truncated harvest period of 5 weeks, with an average yield per acre harvested of over 4 tons/acre, compared to previous assumptions of 2.5 tons/acre. These higher yields significantly reduced the amount of acres necessary to be harvested in order to reach CBEC's target volume of rice straw.

CEO Tom Bowers said, "Our average cash cost for collection of rice straw in this harvest was $9.44 per ton. In the full scale harvest we will undertake in 2007 we are confident that total cost (including capital cost) will not exceed $24.00 per ton. This places us very significantly below the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's benchmark for biomass gathering costs of $30.00 per ton." Rick Nannen added, "Our process gathers rice straw without baling it. Avoiding the baling step significantly reduces the cost of gathering biomass."

In the 2007 harvest CBEC intends to undertake a full-scale rice-straw harvest operation using 5 forage harvester units, over the full 10 weeks of the harvest. This full scale operation will produce over 70,000 tons of rice straw, which will be processed into ethanol in CBEC's biorefinery, on which it is expected to begin construction in 2007.


technorati bioenergy, biorefinery, rice, cellulosic, biofuels, harvest, ethanol

Recycling’s “China Syndrome”

At last month's Southern California Emerging Waste Technologies Forum State Senator David Roberti (ret.) made a statement about the duplicity of state policy on "diversion credits" for specific forms of recycling. I had heard Roberti make a similar statement at a hearing last November but hadn't researched it. Here is what I have learned since...

What are "diversion credits"?

In 1989, Assembly Bill 939, known as the Integrated Waste Management Act was passed because of the increase in California's waste stream and the decrease of its landfill capacity. As a result, the current California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) was established. A disposal reporting system with CIWMB oversight was created and facility and program planning was implemented.

AB 939 mandates a reduction of waste being disposed: jurisdictions were required to meet diversion goals of 25% by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000. Those that didn't meet these deadlines were liable to receive noncompliance fines. Whether a form of diversion receives credit toward the target or not is based on an ongoing refinement of legal definitions in the state's legislature.

Currently, California municipalities qualify for diversion credits on trash that recyclers ship to the China. China can process waste far less expensively than we can in the U.S. because of cheap labor and their incredibly toxic emissions and health standards. As long as the waste is segregated as recyclable it makes no difference how it is processed afterwards as far as our diversion counting is concerned. Talk about sweeping a problem under the rug!

Even waste China is not asking for, e.g. the e-waste piling up in China’s coastal river valleys, is considered diverted according to our counting methodology. Whether the Chinese dump it or we dump it - it shouldn't receive diversion credit.

Believe it or not, if local municipalities instead opt to build clean CTs - conversion technology facilities using gasification or pyrolysis to significantly reduce the volume of waste to be landfilled while generating green energy and clean fuels - they would NOT receive diversion credit! This in spite of the fact that it would represent an ultimate and environmentally responsible processing of the waste near the source.

Why should facilities that convert waste into heat, electricity, and renewable fuels not earn credits for the municipalities that build them? The answer is that recycling groups are afraid of losing control of any portion of the waste stream - that such credits would create irresistable incentives to municipalities at risk of being fined for non-compliance. Once municipalities gain control of their waste streams, recyclers may get less, or as Scott Smithline of Californians Against Waste (CAW) worded it, "“We are concerned that demand, that hunger for feedstock, is going to pull materials from other traditional recycling uses.”

So the environmental interests are taking second seat to bickering over control of the waste stream. But the duplicity is far worse than that. Consider the trail of the waste that goes to China -

1 - The ships that transport the trash thousands of miles to China spew tons of greenhouse gases from burning bulk fuel (the least refined and most toxic oil-based fuel sold). These emissions into the atmosphere return to California and points in-between.

2 - The destinations in China are unregulated, polluting factories that, among other repugnant policies, employ children as sorters within close proximity to toxic ovens that smelt and reform the plastic. Are we so unprincipled that we would ship recyclables to foreign destinations knowing that their low health standards would endanger the workers that handle our trash? Should we credit those shipments for landfill diversion?

3 - Airbourne particulate matter from all unregulated Chinese combustion factories reaches back to the U.S. In a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune entitled China's growing air pollution reaches American skies, UC/David researchers have evidence that as China consumes more fossil fuels to feed its energy-hungry economy, the U.S. is seeing a sharp increase in trans-Pacific pollution that could affect human health, worsen air quality and alter climate patterns.

4 - Plastic and trash debris from throughout Asia accumulates and returns to North America via Pacific ocean currents. In a story titled Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas writers for the Los Angeles Times detailed evidence of waste that was accumulating in giant offshore gyres:

The debris can spin for decades in one of a dozen or more gigantic gyres around the globe, only to be spat out and carried by currents to distant lands. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of the oceans. About 70% will eventually sink.

The purpose of this article is not to point fingers at the recycling industry. Rather, to insist that the California Integrated Waste Management Board's attempts to modernize California's recycling policies, including diversion credits, receive the full backing and support of the California legislature – which it clearly has not. California not only needs to reduce the source of its waste and expand programs for dealing with more types of waste, but also must update the definition of transformation and conversion technologies so that we can process more waste, more completely while creating "green collar jobs" for our own workers. These are the objectives of AB 2118, currently hung up in negotiation before the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee.

Exporting our waste to poorer countries is unprincipled and uncivilized. Furthermore, CTs represent a new opportunity to significantly expand our recycling efforts, reduce landfill demand, suppress pollution of our atmosphere and oceans, reduce greenhouse gases, and create new energy resources to help meet the electricity and fuel needs of future generations both here and abroad.


technorati biofuels, conversion, CTs, greenhouse, California, legislation, diversion, bioenergy

Spinning “Gold” Out of Trash

With its huge population and guilt-free car culture, California is the world's largest consumer of gasoline. By state regulation, 5.67% of the fuel pumped is actually ethanol - which is used as an oxygenate for gasoline. As a result, California is also the world's biggest consumer of ethanol - closing in on 1 Billion gallons per year.

As a rich agricultural state, one would think that there would be a huge production of corn or sugar cane to produce ethanol to meet the demand. Not so. 95% of the ethanol consumed is imported from, primarily, the Midwest by truck. There is no corn farming to speak of in California, nor will we see a sudden switch in cultivation. New ethanol plants located there will be shipping the corn in from surrounding states.

Assuming that California wants to become self-sufficient in ethanol, what will the feedstock be if not corn or sugar cane? The answer is agricultural, forestry, and urban waste. Being a heavily wooded, agriculturally rich, population booming, and super-consuming state means an incredible amount of waste. Therefore, progressive thinkers in California are looking to its waste streams to provide feedstock for the next big thing - biomass conversion of waste into biofuels including cellulosic ethanol, with the co-generation of electricity.

Such a switch couldn't come at a better time. Many professionals in the waste disposal industry recognize that major urban centers like Los Angeles will be faced with a "Peak Landfill" problem way in advance of a "Peak Oil" problem. Available land is scarce in a region of burgeoning development, NIMBYism, and accelerating waste disposal growth.

Kay Martin, Ph.D is vice president of the BioEnergy Producers Association. She directed Ventura County's solid waste programs from 1987 to 2004. She has been an active proponent of waste diversion from landfills for over a decade. She has written an incisive article about the need for landfill diversion and the potential of bioenergy production using conversion technologies. Here are some excerpts from a recent article she wrote for the Ventura County Star - a neighboring county of Los Angeles:

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S.V. Landfill has chance to spin gold out of trash
By Kay Martin

...the total amount of garbage disposed in the county and statewide has not changed much over the past 10 years, despite the best efforts of local governments, businesses and residents to recycle. Recent gains made by recycling have been largely eclipsed by the effects of population and economic growth, and this trend is expected to continue. The growing waste problem is real, and requires some strategic planning now to avert a future crisis.

...Complicating the picture of where waste will flow in the future is the disappearance of local landfills. About the same time that recycling laws were passed, the federal government imposed stringent new standards on disposal sites intended to abate air and groundwater pollution threats. These costly permitting standards contributed to a 63 percent decline in the number of landfills nationally since 1988. The trend is for fewer and larger facilities, more remote from urban centers.

Several landfills in our neighboring Southern California counties are slated for closure, and NIMBY factors have trumped attempts at siting new ones, save for expensive desert landfill options accessible only by rail.

Role for bioenergy

The factor that should weigh heaviest in decisions to expand the Simi Valley Landfill, however, is the emergence of new "bioenergy" industries that can convert about 80 percent of the materials currently going to landfills into environmentally beneficial products — green power, biofuels and a variety of chemicals that reduce our reliance on petroleum. Moreover, because these industries produce valuable commodities, they can be cost-competitive with landfills. Bioenergy plants are operating successfully in both Europe and Japan, and are in various stages of development in other parts of the United States. The central question is, should we be looking to simply bury our wastes in the decades to come, or should we take positive steps now to turn these wastes into resources that can help build a more sustainable society?

The county of Santa Barbara, and the city and county of Los Angeles are each actively engaged in procurement processes to site bioenergy facilities (so-called "conversion technologies") to reduce and ultimately to replace their dependence on landfills.


technorati biofuels, California, ethanol, bioenergy, landfill, diversion, legislation

BRI Energy - Converting Blended Feedstock into Ethanol

Given a choice of three biomass conversion processes, which is the most promising for greatly expanding the nation's ethanol production?
1) sugar fermentation which only works on sugar crops (like corn kernels and sugar cane);
2) enzymatic hydrolysis which relies on the development of specific enzymes to convert a variety of unblended cellulosic feedstock (like corn stover and switchgrass) into sugars that can then be conventionally fermented into ethanol;
3) syngas fermentation which converts blended or unblended cellulosic feedstock (including all of the above and other crops, plus agricultural, forestry, and urban waste, and even fossil fuels) into ethanol while co-generating electricity.

Bill Bruce, President of BRI Energy, LLC, justifiably contends that the answer is syngas fermentation. Not only would the process' feedstock flexibility greatly increase the volume of biomass available to convert, but decentralized facilities could be used to solve both energy and waste disposal problems for a rural and urban communities alike. For instance, success of Los Angeles' comprehensive landfill diversion program, R.E.N.E.W. L.A., depends on the permitting of six plants using technology like BRI Energy's syngas fermentation process.

Testifying at a Congressional hearing this week, Bruce provided a glimpse of what the potential is for his company's patented processes. Not only that, but he revealed that BRI Energy is working on a developed plan to build two commercial-scale ethanol facilities at the vacant K-31 complex at the Oakridge National Laboratory (ORNL) near Knoxville, Tennessee.

As reported in the Green Car Congress blog May 1st (BRI Energy Seeking to Build Two Gasification-Fermentation Ethanol Plants) the company will begin construction as soon as Department of Energy federal loan guarantees are approved.

The first plant would use gasification to convert Western coal into ethanol. Since gasification operates in a closed environment, no toxic emissions would result from the process.The coal gasification facility would cost $25 million, and the company is seeking a $20-million federal loan guarantee.

The second plant would use blended municipal solid waste (MSW) from Knoxville as the feedstock and convert that as well into ethanol. The municipal waste facility would require $62.5 million in private investment and a $250-million federal loan guarantee.

Both facilities would use the heat in the gasification process to co-generate electricity which would be added to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) grid.

The Knoxville News Sentinel also reported on the announcement in their story titled Company plans big ethanol plant in Oak Ridge. Anticipation of 500 new high quality jobs in a clean, breakthrough technology is good news to their readership.

These innovative commercial-scale deployment projects provide the federal government a crucial role to play toward reduction of our fossil fuel addiction - while reducing landfills, greenhouse gases, and unemployment.



technorati bioenergy, BRI Energy, ethanol, feedstock, landfill, Tennessee, Oakridge National Laboratory, RENEW LA, syngas