March 21, 2012
Northeast Agricultural Biomass Heating Seminar
Final Session notes
Developing the Market for Agricultural Biomass in the
Northeast
Producing good yield is very important
What crops are good for growing in the Northeast?
Mixing crops
Problems with switch grass
Contaminants
Best harvesting practices
Late fall harvesting – best thing to do, most practical
Consensus?
Need to know which fuel to:
Standards – progress towards needs to be shared with
larger group
Enviro Energy is standardizing his product
Standardized volumes is when you can start
discussion with consumers
Controlling variability
Manufacturers can then design for it
- Share experience of tinkering that is how progress will be
made.
- Communication necessary!
- Enviro Energy used premium wood pellet mold to determine
necessary density of ag pellets.
Ag biomass can make immediate impact
- District heating needs at SU, ag biomass not (?) good fit for
large commercial application.
Actually, large facilities are good fit compared to residential.
Smaller scale boilers have emission issues. Larger systems are
less problematical because you use technology on the stack to
control emissions.
- It takes all of these conversations to get the industry going.
- Combustion session – research money was available for using
grass pellets in off the shelf units. Research is on going. Some
of the results were less than ideal. Is two stage combustion
system more appropriate for ag biomass? Can you scale down
for residential units? Technology needs for systems that
monitor air flow are challenging with biomass, but it is too
expensive for smaller scale.
- Funding partners that understand the feedstock and
technology to move forward. Maybe next year funding
partners. Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund and NYSERDA are
both here. Both have been supporting a lot of the work that
has been discussed today. Feedstock issues, emission issues.
This is not central to NYSERDA’s mandate.
- BCAP is anyone’s guess whether it will make it through the
farm bill. Putting money into the supply side will not build the
market. Putting money into developing the user end, such as
toward getting appliances into buildings.
- Angel investors, equity, if they do not understand, how can
money be raised for commercialization?
- The Efficiency Maine – very successful, loan for up to $5,000
for improvements to heating systems, stays with house.
- There is a lot of wood around. We need to be able to hit those
prices.
- Cropped biomass is the growth area for reports projecting the
use of biomass as energy. BTEC report and Billion Ton Study
- Agricultural, making money
Areas to track – technology
- Progress toward getting robust equipment for burning
what we have.
- Progress on standardization, who is having success?
What does it mean for their product?
- Progress on yields, what are crops and management
systems?
- Progress on densification. Challenges of switchgrass,
pellets, briquettes, different scales, different end users.
- Progress on preprocessing and blending, or other ways
of conditioning.
- Emission controls on larger units, is it more than wood?
Probably not, probably not burning ag biomass, pollution
controls will be the same – for PM, CO2. Who is going to
get the answer to SU?
- Cost of steam matters to customers, trying to put
biomass component into system. SU doing study to
determine how to incentivize local supply chain.
Contemplating using gasifiers, then able to switch fuels.
- Progress on Regulation?
- Progress on Cost? End cost to customer – can ag biomass
be competitive? We hope the line of ag biomass being
competitive with fossil fuels will cross when we have
solved these issues.
- To some extent, a local issue.
- What do we need to watch?
- Need to day we are cheap, easy, clean, fuel
- 1/2 $ of oil, 75% of wood, can’t touch Natural Gas
- Where have we seen ag biomass projects?
- Carbon emissions vis a vis regulation of GHG
Carbon tax, carbon credit, lacking incentives
- Progress on Scale
- Progress on Market
- Keep it in perspective – patience.
- Encouraging that there are so many people at this event.
- Need volunteers. Use Grass Energy in the Northeast blog to
create something there or linked to a place where we can track
progress on the points described above. News of projects
coming on line - no one around them is dying.
- Share news with group.
- Why should customers go to biomass? Need to focus on this.
Lack of marketing, need to emphasize why switching to
biomass is important. Viable alternative to natural gas.
This is discussion is to help cropped biomass fill the need when
woody biomass hits its stride. What can be done on the land is
expandable. Figuring it out how to do it.
Fun!
www.grassenergy.wordpress.com
Encourage all of us to use resources of Idaho National
Laboratory.
Link to presentations, notes, blog.