Campuses

Chadron State College

In Nebraska, Biomass System Models a Use for Forest Thinnings that Cut Fire Hazard

Forest fires are the urgent impetus for biomass energy in Nebraska. Although the Great Plains state is only two percent forested, its woodlands—long allowed to grow over-dense, and thus fire-hazardous—erupted in the summer of 2006, in several complexes of blazes that altogether destroyed more than 68,000 acres...

Middlebury College

Middlebury College's Biomass Heating and Cooling Plant Aims to Cut Carbon and Costs—in Big Ways

In 2004, when Middlebury College committed itself to cutting by 8 percent its carbon emissions—a pledge it would later strengthen, to full carbon neutrality by 2016—“among the different actions that were identified, biomass was clearly one that could make a big difference,” recalls Jack Byrne, sustainability coordinator at the renowned Vermont liberal-arts college...

Mount Wachusett Community College

College Chip System Smoothly Generates Cost Savings

When Ed Terceiro, then executive vice president of Mount Wachusett Community College (MWCC) in Gardner, Massachusetts, approached the state Division of Capital Asset Management in the early 1990s for approval to heat the college campus with woodchips, he remembers that he met “with a bit of skepticism.”...

Nova Scotia Agricultural College

A College Draws Key Lessons Learned from Two Decade's Experience with Biomass Heat

In the late 1980s, a pioneering wood-fueled district energy system in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (PEI), caught the attention of the provincial government in nearby Nova Scotia. Interested in replicating what PEI had done, the province turned to a small, public college in Truro...

University of Idaho

A Large Campus System Saves $5 Million Annual on Fuel

Since 1986, the University of Idaho has been heating its campus, and more recently also air-conditioning it, with woodchip biomass. “They say on the average that they save $5 million a year over the cost of natural gas,” reports Mike Tennery, Idaho coordinator for the Fuels For Schools program...