Held on Tuesday April 19, 2011
Wild Center, Tupper Lake, New York

During the first hour of the workshop, attendees registered, conversed, collected informational materials, and visited a demonstration by EVOTHERM (a boiler and equipment vendor). Once everyone was convened in the Wild Center’s Auditorium, Kate Fish, Executive Director, ANCA, officiated and began the day with a brief presentation acknowledging the partner conveners of the workshop, an outline of the day’s agenda, and an overview of ANCA’s missions and programs. [view Fish’s Powerpoint presentation in PDF]

Andrea Colnes, Policy Director, BERC, began with an overview of the core principles of biomass energy. She explained that biomass energy can be a new way for communities to address several common themes: renewable energy, rural economic development, sustainable forestry, and climate change, while saving money on energy costs. This is particularly important in the northeast where more than 80 percent of the nation’s heating oil is consumed and the Northern Forest presents an underutilized resource. Colnes went on to identify critical factors for success: maintaining ecological integrity of our forests, ensuring the energy value of our forests is used as fully and cleanly as possible, keeping investments and returns within the community or region, providing communities with a stable and affordable source of energy, and mitigating climate change. Colnes also presented information specific to the forest resource in New York shared via Sloan Crawford, NY State Marketing and Utilization Forester. [view Colnes’s Powerpoint presentation in PDF]

Stephanie Ratcliffe, Executive Director, Wild Center, gave an overview of the Wild Center’s 31-acre site and a comprehensive list of its many climate change and green initiatives—from converting to more efficient lighting to convening energy and climate meetings and summits to presenting environmental exhibits. One of these initiatives has been the inclusion of renewable energy systems in the LEED-certified building, including a demonstration wood pellet heating system combined with a solar hot water heating system. Ratcliffe presented details on the challenges the Wild Center experienced in installing the system and the impact these systems have had on overall energy usage and costs. [view Ratcliffe’s Powerpoint presentation in PDF]

Ellen Burkhard, Project Manager, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), presented information on the emissions from wood boilers. NYSERDA monitors and collects data on the performance of a variety of technologies and Burkhard shared its data on stack emissions from wood heating systems. Of particular concern is particulate matter, which poses a risk to human health; particulate matter emissions are higher from wood-fueled systems than from traditional fossil fuel systems. Burkhard encouraged communities to consider modern, clean burning, and highly efficient technologies to minimize any risk to air quality and human health.

After lunch, David Dungate, Advanced Climate Technologies (ACT), facilitated a tour of the Wild Center’s wood pellet heating and solar hot water systems. The 1.7 million Btu/hour wood pellet boiler was installed in the building’s existing boiler room adjacent to the two existing propane boilers. The wood fuel is stored outdoors in a recycled shipping container adjacent to the building. The container is purposely tipped at a 45-degree angle to facilitate the flow of pellets into the fuel handling system. Solar thermal collectors are installed on the roof of the shipping container.

Kamalesh Doshi, BERC Senior Program Director, Biomass Energy Resource Center, followed the tour with a discussion on how to proceed with installing a biomass energy system in a community. There are five basic questions to be answered that can help to “pre-qualify” a community and determine whether the particular application would be a candidate for a preliminary feasibility study. The preliminary feasibility study is a good first step for candidate communities since it is a lower-cost, first-look at the universe of biomass energy options for a community. The results of the study will inform decision-makers and stakeholders on the best options for utilizing local biomass fuels, and those options can be studied or engineered in greater detail. Doshi outlined the critical steps in moving a project forward from visiting other existing wood energy systems to talking with potential fuel suppliers to engineering and finally to selecting equipment. [view Doshi’s Powerpoint presentation in PDF]

The day ended with an expert panel discussion with questions and answers from the audience covering topics from fuel quality to job creation to conducting feasibility studies.

For more information on biomass energy and to obtain electronic copies of the fact sheets, case studies, and reports that were made available to workshop participants, please see the following links to the BERC website:

• Fact Sheets on Community-Scale Biomass Energy
• Case Studies of Select Biomass Systems
• Select BERC Publications

Image Captions (from top):

Map of New York State showing forested areas of five acres and larger. [photo credit: NYS Department of Environmental Conservation]

Experts from NYSERDA, ACT Bioenergy, EVORTHERM, Curran Energy, and BERC answering questions from workshop participants. [photo credit: Northern Forest Center]