With funding from the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities and the US Department of Energy through the support of Senator Patrick Leahy, BERC has developed this searchable database of community-scale facilities in the United States and Canada that use biomass energy for heating or combined heat and power (CHP). The database includes an array of information on each facility to assist stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds in understanding the current demand for biomass fuels as an energy source and the viability and success of biomass energy projects.

This is the beginning of what we hope will be a definitive list. It is meant to be an interactive tool to collect information on a continuing basis. If you have additions or corrections to a facility entry, please see instructions below. BERC is committed to building this database and maintaining it over time so that is becomes and remains a useful and reliably accurate tool. To do so, we need your help, so please let us know of any additions or corrections needed.

Examples of community-scale facilities are schools, campuses, hospitals, prisons, public buildings, community district energy, multi-family or senior housing, government buildings and complexes, commercial or office buildings, farms and greenhouses, and smaller industrial parks. Community-scale facilities are larger than residential and smaller than industrial. In general these are in the 0.5 to 15 MMBtu/hour (heat output) size range, but can include larger systems in the case of campus or district energy systems.

Case Studies on Community-Scale Biomass Facilities

BERC has created a series of 55 case studies showcasing select best-in-class community-scale biomass systems in the United States, Canada, and Europe. These case studies, which can be accessed from the BERC website or from individual listings within either database, provide evidence that local biomass feed stocks are proven to be a technically and financially viable fuel source. This work was funded by the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities and the US Department of Energy.

University of Tennessee Database and Literature Review

A larger database comprising a wider range of biomass system sizes (community through industrial scale) in the United States and Canada is being developed by the University of Tennessee (UT) Office of Bioenergy Programs. Called Wood2Energy, the database is part of a UT literature review on the state of the science of wood-to-energy conversion. These efforts were funded by the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities. (Note: The Wood2Energy database is under construction by UT, and does not currently contain complete information.)

How to Use this Information

Collectively, these four products—the two national databases, the case studies series, and the literature review—provide a current overview of the state of wood-to-energy science and technology, including both well-established systems using commercialized equipment and technologies that are still under development. All of this information together supports analyses for a variety of purposes, including new market and project development.

The BERC community-scale database can be viewed and searched using either the database search tool or the map search tool. Users are invited to review the information provided here, suggest additional entries, and edit an existing entry using the links below or the side navigation on the left.

Go to the database search tool

Go to the map search tool

Go to the case studies

Add an entry

Edit an existing entry