Biomass Power in Florida - of all places

AMELIA ISLAND, FLA - Most people don't associate Florida with forests, but the state's agricultural sector produces an enormous amount of it - as do the region's forests. Small wonder then that ADAGE LLC, a joint venture owned by affiliates of Duke Energy Company and AREVA SA, a leading U.S. nuclear vendor, have announced plans to develop their first bio-power facility in the United States on a 215-acre site in Hamilton County, about 80 miles west of Jacksonville.

"We are pleased to partner with Hamilton County as it considers becoming the first community to host an ADAGE renewable energy facility," said Reed Willis, ADAGE president. Although no start date has been announced, the project's construction phase is expected to generate about 400 jobs. Once completed and operational, it will provide about 125 jobs.

"We are extremely excited that ADAGE has selected Hamilton County for their first biomass energy plant," said Danny Johnson, Hamilton County Coordinator. "It will have a huge economic impact on our local economy and will supply much needed employment opportunity at the generating facility and in our timber industry as well."

Once it is completed, the carbon-neutral Hamilton County facility will provide clean, uninterruptible power to about 40,000 homes.

Biomass power makes strides to join wind and solar power

NEW YORK - The Wall Street Journal reports a building boom in biomass power plant construction in its June 2 edition, especially in parts of the country that are short on wind and solar resources. Journal writers attribute renewed interest in biomass to much anticipated new federal renewable energy.

The recently passed House version of the new energy bill - which on cue from the Natural Resources Defense Council, excludes biomass from federal forests from the new energy standard - requires that utilities get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources, including biomass, by 2020.

For companies that operate outside of the sunny Southland and the windy Midwest, biomass - which can include trees, tree debris, agricultural waste or grasses - are seen as an economical way to meet the mandates while reaping the benefits of lucrative renewable energy tax credits.

Atlanta-based Southern Company has announced plans to build a $135 million facility in the South. Separately, Oglethorpe Power Corporation, a cooperative, has purchased land on which it intents to construct at least two 100-megawatt biomass plants at a cost of $400 million each.

Biomass power is expected to supply about 4.5 percent of the nation's domestic power by 2030, nearly double what wind is expected to produce. Unlike wind and solar, which currently only work when the sun shines and the wind blows, biomass can provide a constant fuel source for electric generation.

Pulpwood consumption and chip exports up in Chile

SEATTLE, WA - World Resources International reports that growth in fast-growing eucalyptus plantations established in the 1990s has enabled Chile to expand pulpwood production and wood chip exports at the same time. Last year's overseas shipments reached a record high. Chile is now the second largest wood chip exporter in the world.

Australia is No.1. Almost all of Chile's chip exports have been eucalyptus chips destined for Japan. Of 16 major chip exporting countries, Chile has the lowest wood fiber costs.

Pulpwood plantations and pulp and paper manufacturers in South America represent fearsome competition for U.S. producers who must deal with much higher land, labor and regulatory costs.

New USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Nominated

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Obama Administration has nominated a Natural Resources Conservation Service veteran to be the new Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the Department of Agriculture. He is Homer Lee Wilkes, a 28-year NRCS veteran who is currently Mississippi State Conservationist.

NCRS - the old Soil Conservation Service established in 1935 by the Roosevelt Administration - emphasizes voluntary science-based conservation, technical assistance, partnerships, incentive-based programs and cooperative problem solving at the community level.

During his NCRS tenure, Wilkes has also served as a budget officer in Amherst, Massachusetts, chief of administrative staff for the Southern Technical Center at Fort Worth, Texas and assistant financial manager and fiscal specialist in Washington, D.C.

He received his bachelors and master's degrees from Jackson State University, where he also earned a PhD in urban conservation planning.

Agriculture has new Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has appointed Jay Jensen to be his new Deputy Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment. As such, he will oversee the U.S. Forest Service, which is responsible for the 193 million acre National Forest System, and also provides technical assistance to more than 10 million small timberland owners in the United States.

"Jay Jensen brings a combination of on-the-ground and government experience that we need in this role," Vilsack said in announcing the appointment. "He is a forester and wildland firefighter with an extensive background in policy, management and legislation. I'll be looking for Jay's leadership as we address the health of our forests. This is a top priority at USDA because it relates to several critical challenges - the intensity of forest fires, climate change, biomass and renewable energy, clean water and revitalizing forest-dependent communities."

Jensen has been Executive Director of the Council of Western State Foresters/Western Forestry Leadership Coalition since May of 2005. He has also served as senior forestry advisor for the Western Governors Association, where he was responsible for the group's biomass energy program. Before that, as lead forestry advisor for the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, Jensen helped develop programs under the 2002 Farm Bill. He was also lead policy analyst for the National Association of State Foresters.

Jensen holds degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles and Colorado State University.

Montana Governor beats the drum for biomass

HELENA, Mt - Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer has joined the growing chorus calling for development of the renewable energy potential locked away in the West's federally-owned forests.

"Biomass is one more leg under the table of our energy future," Schweitzer, a Democrat, told participants in a Western Governors Association bio-energy workshop conducted in Missoula, Montana in early May.

"We will continue to find ways use this valuable resource as we manager forests near our towns and reduce the fire threat presented by red trees," Schweitzer said. "Better yet, we can help to ensure the viability of timber jobs in an industry that is very important to both western Montana communities and forest health alike."

Schweitzer, who took over the WGA chairmanship in June, was in Missoula to tout a new biomass study conducted by the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research. The study, by Todd Morgan, Director of Forest Industry Research for BBEE, leaves no doubt about the fact that even in the most conservative of outlooks. Montana's dead and dying federal forests hold enormous potential. Click here to read Morgan's study -  http://portal.evergreenmagazine.com/web/Montana_Forest_Biomass_Supply_Challenges_and_Opportunities.html to read Morgan's study.

Schweitzer, a second-term Democrat governor, became chairman of the Western Governors Association in June.

Nation's largest forest restoration project

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona - The Grand Canyon Trust, Arizona Forest Restoration Products and the Center for Biological Diversity have signed an agreement pledging their mutual support to a plan for restoring northern Arizona's ponderosa pine forests.

The agreement, which was reached May 1, marks a sea change in southwestern forest management, which has been marred by litigation - virtually all of it promulgated by the Center for Biological Diversity. Now the Tucson-based organization will join with the Trust and Arizona Forest Restoration, in a plan that calls for reducing the number of dead and dying trees standing in the state's forests, which are concentrated on the Mogollon Rim, overlooking Grand Canyon.

"The scientific basis for moving forward with landscape-scale ecological restoration in northern Arizona's pine forests is well established," declared Taylor McKinnon, public lands program director at the Center. "This agreement is a commitment to responsible and ambitious action that Arizona's forests need. It's the culmination of more than 15 years of hard work by the Center, Grand Canyon Trust and other stakeholders to move beyond controversy and get on with the hard work of restoring these once-majestic forests."

The memorandum calls for returning fire and conserving biological diversity on more than 1 million acres of federal forestland over the next 20 years. Work on the plan began several years ago after it became clear that restoration was a more productive strategy that long years of litigation.

"Today's agreement offers leadership, capacity and momentum in the context of agreements already forged in Arizona," observed Ethan Aumack, director of forest restoration programs for the Grand Canyon Trust, an organization originally founded to support Grand Canyon National Park. The Trust got involved in northern Arizona's forest health problems several years ago after it became concerned about increasing tree mortality along the Mogollon Rim.

"The agreement recognizes that forests need fire to be healthy and adapt to climate change, and recognizes that the need to reduce small-tree densities can, and should, result in economic benefits for rural communities," Aumack continued. "Breaking gridlock now will have profound and positive impacts for forests, communities and rural economies across the Mogollon Rim for decades to come."

The memorandum apparently clears the way for construction of a long awaited oriented-strand board plant at Winslow, north of Show Low, a bucolic resort community about three hours north of Phoenix that came within minutes of its own destruction during the disastrous 2002 Rodeo-Chediski wildfire. OSB panels, used in home construction, are made from pressed wood chips. Arizona Forest Restoration Products will build the facility, which will have a lifespan of 20 years. It will draw its fiber supply from the treatment of 30,000 acres per year. Key to the company's plans for building the facility was a pledge from the Center for Biological Diversity not to litigate any of the restoration work so long as it conforms to the terms of the agreement.

"Our goal is to provide an economic engine to fund a restorative vision in northern Arizona, and to operate in a framework of collaboration, science, ecological sustainability and economic viability and predictability," the Trust's Aumack explained.

On hearing news of the agreement, Evergreen Foundation executive director, Jim Petersen, said, "I'd like to think that, while we had nothing to do with this agreement, we helped pave the way in a small way by featuring northern Arizona's desperately ill forests in several issues of Evergreen Magazine. The Trust has worked very hard on this for at least a decade. They are to be congratulated for finding a way to bring the Center of Biological Diversity to the table."

Although Petersen praised the agreement, he wondered aloud whether it would be possible - 20 years hence - to maintain stand density in northern Arizona ponderosa pine forests with fire alone.

"My sense is that it won't work," he said. "Unless Grand Canyon tourists are willing to tolerate long months of smoke in which views of the canyon will be visually impaired, I'd hazard a guess that there will always be a need to mechanically thin the region's forests. Prescribed fire is a great forestry tool in the right setting, but I think its value is limited when viewed in the larger context of our post-industrial society's health and safety concerns. Time will tell."  

Global pulp production continues its downward spiral

SEATTLE, WA - The global recession is taking its toll on worldwide pulp and paper markets. Production was down 16 percent in the first two months of 2009 compared to the same period last year. Seattle-based Wood Resources International, which tracks global wood and paper markets, which reports that the decline is production and pricing is the sharpest since 1995. The largest declines have occurred in western North America, Oceania, Latin America and the Nordic countries. However, the downward trend is expected to reverse course as the world's economy recovers and demand for paper and packaging materials picks up.

U.S. replaces Russia as Japan's leading supplier of logs

SEATTLE, WA - By default, the U.S. is now the largest exporter of logs destined for Japanese homebuilding markets. The loser: the former Soviet Union, which for the last 15 years has been a major supplier of export logs consumed by Japanese sawmills and plywood manufacturers. But most of the decline in log imports to Japan - 34 percent in 2008 and 50 percent since 2004 - has been in Russian logs. Seattle-based Wood Resources International reports that Russia is no longer the low cost timber supplier it once was. Moreover, the Japanese apparently don't consider Russia to be a reliable log source. As Japan's economy improves, the country's forest products manufacturers are expected to increase imports of logs from New Zealand and North America.

Seven Myths about Green Jobs

 BOZEMAN, Mont - The Property and Environment Research Center - PERC - has just published a thoughtful analysis of the "green jobs" market potential titled, "Seven Myths About Green Jobs."

The analysis, written by four scholars - Andrew P. Morriss, University of Illinois, William Bogart, York College of Pennsylvania, Andrew Dorchak, Case Western University and Roger Meiners, University of Texas at Arlington - makes for excellent reading for anyone wanting to find out what all the fuss about "green jobs" is about.

Among the myths cited in the report: there is no standard definition for what constitutes a green job; most green jobs will not boost productive employment; green job estimates use "poor models based on dubious assumptions;" green jobs promote low paying jobs not increased productivity; green employment is based on unrealistic assumptions that will actually reduce the world's standard of living; green jobs are based on government mandates, not customer needs; and many so-called "green technologies" are not capable of meeting today's consumer demands.

Copies of the full report are available at http://www.perc.org/