Top Five Biomass Boosters in the U.S. Senate

- by Erin Voegele, April 3, 2015, Bio­mass Magazine

A group of five sen­a­tors recent­ly sent a let­ter to two sub­com­mit­tees of the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Appro­pri­a­tions ask­ing them to sup­port fund­ing for pro­grams that bol­ster the devel­op­ment of ther­mal and elec­tric bio­mass ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, sup­ply chains and mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties. The let­ter was signed by Sens. Ron. Wyden, D‑Ore.; Maria Cantwell, D‑Wash.; Angus King, I‑Maine; Jeanne Sha­heen, D‑N.H.; and Bernard Sanders, I‑Vt.

The let­ter is addressed to Sens. Lamar Alexan­der, R‑Tenn., chair of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Water Devel­op­ment; Dianne Fein­stein, D‑Calif., rank­ing mem­ber of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Water Devel­op­ment; Lisa Murkows­ki, R‑Alaska, chair of the Sub­com­mit­tee on the Devel­op­ment of the Inte­ri­or, Envi­ron­ment, and Relat­ed Agen­cies; and Tom Udall, D‑N.M., rank­ing mem­ber of the Sub­com­mit­tee on the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or, Envi­ron­ment, and Relat­ed Agencies.

With­in the let­ter, the sen­a­tors note that domes­ti­cal­ly pro­duced bio­mass used to gen­er­ate heat and elec­tric­i­ty is a secure source of renew­able ener­gy that cre­ates jobs in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and enhances cru­cial cash-strapped fed­er­al efforts to man­age pub­lic lands, includ­ing for­est restora­tion and wild­fire risk reduc­tion. “The for­est prod­ucts indus­try has used bio­mass for pow­er and heat for decades, yet its wide­spread use is rel­a­tive­ly recent,” Wyden wrote. “As the scale of bio­heat and biopow­er appli­ca­tions expands, there are new tech­no­log­i­cal and logis­ti­cal hur­dles that must be addressed.”

The sen­a­tors indi­cate that the scope of the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Office of Bioen­er­gy Tech­nolo­gies is cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed to bio­fu­els. They advo­cate that the OBT expand its scope to include bio­heat and pow­er. To sup­port that expan­sion, the let­ter asks the Sub­com­mit­tee on Ener­gy and Water Devel­op­ment to pro­vide the OBT with $5 mil­lion to sup­port the devel­op­ment of tech­niques for pre­pro­cess­ing bio­mass for heat and elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, with empha­sis on low­er­ing the costs of dis­trib­uted pre­pro­cess­ing tech­nolo­gies. This includes tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­mote den­si­fi­ca­tion, tor­refac­tion and the broad­er com­modi­ti­za­tion of bioen­er­gy feed­stocks, with the goal of low­er­ing trans­porta­tion and logis­tics costs. An addi­tion $5 mil­lion is request­ed to sup­port bio­heat and biopow­er demon­stra­tion projects, includ­ing inno­v­a­tive projects that address the chal­lenges of retro­fitting exist­ing coal-fired pow­er plants to uti­lize bio­mass, dis­trict ener­gy projects, and com­bined-heat-and-pow­er (CHP) instal­la­tions. Final­ly, the sub­com­mit­tee is asked to pro­vide $1 mil­lion to the OBT to pro­duce addi­tion­al research and analy­sis on the envi­ron­men­tal, social and eco­nom­ic costs and ben­e­fits of the Amer­i­can biopow­er and bio­heat indus­tries, with empha­sis on how to improve the per­for­mance of sup­ply chains.

The sen­a­tors also ask both sub­com­mit­tees to adopt spe­cif­ic report lan­guage regard­ing inter­a­gency coop­er­a­tion. That lan­guage reads: “It is the opin­ion of the com­mit­tee that suc­cess in the advance­ment of ther­mal and elec­tric appli­ca­tions of bioen­er­gy will be max­i­mized by coor­di­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy and the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture For­est Ser­vice. The com­mit­tee rec­og­nizes that there are exist­ing chan­nels of col­lab­o­ra­tion between the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy and the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture For­est Ser­vice regard­ing the devel­op­ment of bioen­er­gy for trans­porta­tion fuel appli­ca­tions (bio­fu­els), and directs these two agen­cies to estab­lish sim­i­lar for­mal col­lab­o­ra­tions on ther­mal and elec­tric appli­ca­tions of bioenergy.”