If you&rsquo;ve been reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any number of other sources, you know there&rsquo;s recently been a lot of controversy in the media and the nonprofit world about biomass. Unfortunately, a lot of the pieces discussing the environmental impacts of biomass energy have emitted more heat than light&mdash;if only we could capture that form of thermal energy! To counter the effects of these incomplete narratives, many in the industry feel that we just need Congress to put a simple statement of biomass&rsquo;s carbon neutrality into legislation. This is understandable, especially given that the October meeting of the U.S. EPA&rsquo;s Scientific Advisory Board continued the uncertainty of the details of how EPA should measure biomass&rsquo;s carbon benefits in an agency discussion that has been going on since 2011 with no clear end in sight. There&rsquo;s also a sense from many industry people I have talked to that maybe biomass advocates are simply being outspent and overwhelmed in terms of marketing dollars, and we just need a powerful, well-funded PR campaign blitz of our own to counteract that. Neither of these ideas are wrong or off-base, but neither should they be the centerpiece of the industry&rsquo;s response to alarmist pieces about clearcutting and burning America&rsquo;s forests. That&rsquo;s because we have another tool that is even better: well-researched, factual information. This hasn&rsquo;t always been the case in the biomass heating and cooling industry. In my experience working for a national trade association, it is common for us to get requests for data about issues such as life-cycle analyses for wood chip or pellet heating versus various fossil fuels, or about the size and scope of the biomass heating market or industry in the U.S. or North America. Often we can point people to that information, but there have also been way too many instances where the facts on the ground are scarce and not well-sourced. (Biomass Magazine has been one an exception to this trend, with its perceptive reporting and tools such as its annual pellet plant map.) The strong, solidly founded data that I&rsquo;ve noticed coming out recently is emanating from various sources and has, for the most part, been in the works for a while now. One example of this is the U.S. Energy Information Administration&rsquo;s data from its EIA-63C survey, also known as the Densified Biomass Fuel Report, which surveyed as many of currently operating pellet plants in the USA as possible about their capacity, staffing, and production. EIA expects to release the first month of data from this survey (January 2016) by Thanksgiving, and will release month-by-month survey results after that. One interesting early piece of information that came out about the data collected so far: For the portion of the pellets that are going to the domestic market (which is primarily heating focused, not electricity), by far, the main feedstocks were sawdust and wood manufacturing residuals, with any type of roundwood (including thinnings and small-diameter pulpwood) coming a distant third. Results like this, once the survey data comes out, will be invaluable to really demonstrating the actual size and impacts of the U.S. pellet market, and its economic and sustainability benefits. Also, a couple of great studies have recently come out of the Northeast. They take a hard look at vexed questions such as carbon accounting and economic value. The New Hampshire Wood Energy Council recently analyzed wood fuel use in 2015 in the state&rsquo;s hospitals, schools, municipal buildings, and commercial sector and estimated that 69,091 tons of CO2 were eliminated by switching to wood fuels, generating $35.9 million in the local economy. Another great study is the Northern Forest Center and Spatial Informatics Group-National Assets Laboratory life-cycle assessment of greenhouse gas reductions gained by using wood pellets in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York instead of fossil fuels. This included a survey of nine pellet mills, a careful accounting of the energy sources those mills themselves used and inclusion of other factors such as modeling the growth of trees and harvesting effects. The study, by Thomas Buchholz, PhD. and John Gunn, PhD., is being prepared for peer review submission, and the full detailed methodology is available to the public on the Northern Forest Center&rsquo;s website. Amidst what seems like a deluge of half-truths and hyperbole about biomass and its effects, it&rsquo;s important for the industry not to shy away from rigorously showing the real-world benefits that this form of renewable energy can bring. Author: Ben Bell-Walker Biomass Thermal Energy Council, Technical Affairs 202-596-3974 Ben.bell-walker@biomassthermal.org

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Amidst what seems like a deluge of half-truths and hyperbole about biomass and its effects, it's important for the industry not to shy away from rigorously showing the real-world benefits that this form of renewable energy can bring.

The Difficulty of Getting Good Biomass Heating Data

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