USDA to Expand Taxpayer Handouts to Biomass Industry

USDA Announces Ini­tia­tive to Expand U.S. Wood-to-Ener­gy Efforts

- by Sue Ret­ka Schill, Sep­tem­ber 13, 2013. Source: Bio­mass Mag­a­zine 

The USDA announced a part­ner­ship agree­ment to expand wood ener­gy use, which will help improve the safe­ty and health of U.S. forests. The new part­ner­ships include USDA, the Alliance for Green Heat, the Bio­mass Pow­er Asso­ci­a­tion, the Bio­mass Ther­mal Ener­gy Coun­cil and the Pel­let Fuels Insti­tute. Ag sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack also announced more than $1.1 mil­lion in grants to five orga­ni­za­tions to form state-wide teams that will stim­u­late devel­op­ment of wood ener­gy projects in Ida­ho, Cal­i­for­nia, Min­neso­ta, New Hamp­shire and Alaska.

“Today’s announce­ments will help us find inno­v­a­tive ways to use left­over wood to cre­ate renew­able ener­gy and sup­port good jobs in rur­al Amer­i­ca,” Vil­sack said. “Wood to Ener­gy efforts are a part of our ‘all of the above’ ener­gy strat­e­gy. Appro­pri­ate­ly scaled wood ener­gy facil­i­ties also sup­port our efforts to remove haz­ardous fuels and reduce the risks of cat­a­stroph­ic wildfires.”

The part­ner­ship agree­ment focus­es on pro­mot­ing wood ener­gy nation­wide as a means to address fire risk, bol­ster rur­al eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, improve air qual­i­ty and help meet the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion’s renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy goals. These orga­ni­za­tions sup­port the use of wood ener­gy across the scale of users – from res­i­den­tial users, to com­mer­cial and insti­tu­tion­al facil­i­ties, to indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of heat and/or elec­tric­i­ty to dri­ve busi­ness­es and feed the elec­tri­cal grid. The mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) signed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the four wood-ener­gy orga­ni­za­tions and USDA rec­og­nizes the shared goals and inter­ests amongst the sign­ers in expand­ing the use of wood to ener­gy: cre­at­ing local jobs, increas­ing afford­able heat­ing and elec­tric­i­ty options for rur­al Amer­i­cans, improv­ing for­est health, reduc­ing wild­fire risks, and pro­mot­ing effi­cient bio­mass tech­nolo­gies across res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al seg­ments of the wood ener­gy arena.

“This is the cul­mi­na­tion of con­ver­sa­tions over the past four years,” explained Doug O’Brien, USDA act­ing under­sec­re­tary for rur­al devel­op­ment. “We for­mal­ized some of the things we talked about on what we can do togeth­er to kick it up to the next lev­el.” Among the focus areas will be to coor­di­nate and pri­or­i­tize pri­vate and pub­lic research, he said. “And, for us at rur­al devel­op­ment, just the out­reach com­po­nent is impor­tant.”  Through the MOU and state-wide efforts, the ini­tia­tive will help more com­mu­ni­ties learn about the fed­er­al pro­grams avail­able to sup­port wood-to-ener­gy efforts. One is the Renew­able Ener­gy for Amer­i­ca Pro­gram that has aid­ed a num­ber of projects across the nation. One exam­ple, O’Brien said, is a green­house in Con­necti­cut that reduced its ener­gy costs by 70 per­cent through bio­mass uti­liza­tion. O’Brien also men­tioned that the USDA’s elec­tric loan pro­gram, which typ­i­cal­ly sup­ports rur­al elec­tric coop­er­a­tives, has includ­ed $500 mil­lion for bio­mass uti­liza­tion in the past few years.

In addi­tion to the out­reach for broad­er uti­liza­tion of the fed­er­al pro­grams, O’Brien said, “we’ll be work­ing with the groups to iden­ti­fy and lift up suc­cess­es and best prac­tices, mak­ing sure oth­ers under­stand how well these projects work.”  While the poten­tial for wood-to-ener­gy uti­liza­tion is well-under­stood in the North­west and north­ern New Eng­land, he added, the new ini­tia­tive hopes to expand that under­stand­ing into oth­er regions.

Under the terms of the five state grants announced, pri­vate, state and fed­er­al orga­ni­za­tions will work togeth­er to stim­u­late the devel­op­ment of addi­tion­al wood ener­gy projects in their states. Col­lec­tive­ly, $2.9 mil­lion will be spent on this effort – $1.1 mil­lion in fed­er­al funds and $1.8 mil­lion in non­fed­er­al funds. Grant recip­i­ents include the Ida­ho Gov­er­nor’s Office of Ener­gy Resources, the Water­shed Research & Train­ing Cen­ter in Hay­fork, Calif., the Min­neso­ta Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources, the North Coun­try Resource Con­ser­va­tion & Devel­op­ment Coun­cil in Gil­ford, N.H., and the Alas­ka Ener­gy Author­i­ty in Anchorage.

The USDA held an event in Wash­ing­ton Sept. 11 to make the announce­ment with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the four nation­al orga­ni­za­tions. “This MOU shows a sig­nif­i­cant com­mit­ment by the USDA and the bio­mass indus­try to work togeth­er to expand use of wood ener­gy in our coun­try,” said Scott Jacobs, pres­i­dent of PFI.  “I know I speak for all of our mem­ber­ship when I say that we are thrilled to be work­ing in a more delib­er­ate part­ner­ship with USDA and our col­leagues with­in the bio­mass industry.”

“The USDA is unique­ly posi­tioned to help rur­al fam­i­lies bet­ter use wood and pel­lets to heat their homes and we look for­ward to work­ing with them on that,” said John Ack­er­ly, pres­i­dent of the Alliance for Green Heat. “With the resur­gence of wood and pel­let heat­ing, it’s the third most com­mon form of heat­ing in Amer­i­ca after gas and elec­tric­i­ty,” he said in his remarks at the USDA event, “but we need even clean­er and more effi­cient stoves on the mar­ket, and we need to help remove the old­er, less effi­cient wood stoves.”