The feasibility of developing a biomass industry to heat and possibly power portions of Cook County is at this point blowing in the political wind. At an April 5 meeting at the courthouse, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Dovetail Partners reported on the progress of the research they have done so far. The project they have undertaken was initiated by the Cook County Local Energy Project.
The county board has funded the study in part, but its completion will depend on whether the newly elected state legislature follows the recommendations of the Legislative- Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), which recommended a grant for the study last year.
Analysis is being done of Hungry Jack Lodge, Lutsen Resort, and the City of Grand Marais – three differently sized systems. The cost of obtaining the biomass supply and the amount of energy produced from it will help determine what the payback period might be.
Cost benefits and more
Lower heat and power costs are one potential benefit of biomass energy, but other benefits might be valuable to the community as well, such as reducing wildfire risk, developing local industry, and gaining independence from foreign sources of fuel. Getting heat and power at the lowest possible cost might not be the biggest deciding factor for Cook County, financial analyst Andrew Smale suggested at the meeting, and to illustrate this, he told a story.
Smale’s father, a farmer, was thinking about buying a new grain dryer, a piece of equipment that would literally enable him to get more sleep at night because he wouldn’t have to tend the grain as frequently. Smale analyzed the cost/benefit ratio and found that his dad would lose $500 on the dryer. He told his dad it wasn’t worth buying because of this, but his dad said it would keep him from having to stay up tending the grain at night and would be more energy efficient than the equipment he had already, reducing his reliance on foreign fuel. He considered it worth a loss of $500.
Anticipated usage
The cost of various types of fuel in Cook County have been estimated as follows: Fuel oil, $29.46 per million BTUs; regular electricity, $28.14 per million BTUs; propane, $26.63 per million BTUs; “interruptible” electricity, $16.30 per million BTUs; wood (at least in industrial quantities) $4.50- 12.00 per million BTUs. (A BTU is a British thermal unit, which represents the amount of energy it takes to raise one pound of water one degree.)
The amount of wood that would be needed per year to heat Bearskin Lodge would be about 68 cords (3.7 trucks) of pellets or 146 cords (8.8 trucks) of chips. To heat the lodge building only, 56.9 cords (3.8 trucks) of cordwood would be needed.
Heating Lutsen Resort would take almost 325 cords (17.7 trucks) of pellets or about 709 cords (42.5 trucks) of chips per year.
Creating heat and power for Grand Marais would require 12,042 cords (723 trucks) of chips or 12,705 cords (762 trucks) of hog fuel (less refined than pellets). Creating heat only would require 7,330 cords (440 trucks) of chips or 7,928 cords (476 trucks) of hog fuel per year.
Going by the researchers’ assumption that one truck could carry 20 tons, the total amount needed would be no more than 16,266 tons.
In figuring out how much wood is available from the local forest, the amount that exists in various forms – bole wood, tops and limbs, stumps, saplings, and below the ground – is analyzed. The amount that would need to stay on the ground for the health of the forest is being considered. If 10 percent of the bole wood available each year were used for biomass in addition to half of the residual material available each year, 67,272 oven-dried tons would be available for energy annually.
By comparison, 80 percent of downtown St. Paul is heated with residual biomass from the St. Paul area, and this uses up to 300,000 tons a year. Tooling up
The researchers have talked to about a dozen logging businesses about their interest in becoming biomass harvesters. “The general sentiment is that they’re quite interested,” Smale said. “The cost of entry is a concern.” The trick would be to be guaranteed enough business quickly enough to warrant investing in the equipment that would be necessary. Smale said the U.S. Forest Service has purchased equipment for loggers in some places around the U.S., but some of it has not been utilized because biomass has not yet taken off as a major source of fuel in those locations.
With a lot of Cook County’s birch and aspen dying of old age and the U.S. Forest Service wanting to reduce wildfire risk, biomass harvest may seem like good sense. The wood products industry has moved toward voluntarily implementing sustainable healthy forest standards, Dennis Becker of the University of Minnesota said. Dovetail Executive Director Katie Fernholz said more and more people understand the global impact of importing wood instead of using what is available locally. “I’m optimistic that we’re headed in the right direction of responsible forest management,” she said.
Leave a Reply