Fire Danger Fuels Trees-For-Fuel Plans

Link Phillippi, president of Rough & Ready Lumber Co. in O'Brien, Ore., looks over a stand of the company's timber on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2007. The company is building a biomass generator to produce steam and electricity by burning small trees thinned from stands like this to reduce wildfire danger and help the mature trees grow faster. (AP Photo by Jeff Barnard) (Jeff Barnard - AP)

And the Forest Service has developed just one long-term contract for forest thinning. Without a long-term contract, developers are wary of investing millions of dollars.

"If the Forest Service got serious about this and wanted to solve 50 percent of the (forest thinning) problem over the next two decades, there might be 5,000 to 10,000 megawatts of biomass power," said Carlson.

A report for the Western Governors Association estimates biomass in the West has a potential to produce more than 10,000 megawatts _ about 1 percent of the nation's production by 2015. About half would come from forest thinning. The rest from urban waste and agriculture.

Spurred by the massive Rodeo-Chedeski fire of 2002, which burned 400 homes, the Apache-Sitgraves National Forest in Arizona has let a 10-year contract to thin 150,000 acres that is generating small logs for lumber, wood pellets for stoves, and fueling a 3 megawatt biomass plant, said Forest Supervisor Elaine Zieroth.

Zieroth said having buyers for the trees too small for lumber helps reduce the cost of thinning from $900 an acre to $500 an acre. If forest service officials could expand the market enough to break even, they could easily thin 800,000 acres that need it.

Future projects are being developed, but likely will remain small, geared to local needs and conditions, said Marcia Patton-Mallory, biomass coordinator for the Forest Service.

Environmentalists are wary. Although they like the idea that biomass generation can help pay for forest thinning, they want natural fire to take over once the thinning is done.

"One should not consider biomass energy sustainable or renewable," said environmental consultant Andy Kerr, who has been working to help more biomass projects get up and running. "Because for the most part, after these forests have been thinned, you don't want them to get thick again, certainly not thick enough to be economically feasible to cut the trees down and haul them to the biomass energy incinerator."

For now, the grants and tax credits make construction of a biomass plant too good to pass up, making it possible to pay back the estimated $5 million investment in four years instead of 10, said Phillippi of Rough & Ready Lumber.

"These plants were always unaffordable because of our size," said Phillippi. But with the grants and tax credits, "It looked pretty good. We went ahead and did it. We're glad we did."