USDA Spends $9 Million More on Biomass Energy

- U.S. For­est Ser­vice, April 9, 2015

Today, Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack announced the award of over $9 mil­lion to expand and accel­er­ate wood ener­gy and oth­er wood prod­uct mar­kets. The fed­er­al funds will lever­age $22 mil­lion in invest­ments from part­ners, result­ing in a total invest­ment of $31 mil­lion in 23 states.

“Work­ing with our part­ners, the For­est Ser­vice is pro­mot­ing deploy­ment of new tech­nolo­gies, designed to sup­port new mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties for wood ener­gy and inno­v­a­tive wood build­ing mate­ri­als,” said Vil­sack. “This fund­ing also sup­ports for­est man­age­ment needs on the Nation­al For­est Sys­tem and oth­er for­est lands through­out the Unit­ed States.”

“The For­est Ser­vice rec­og­nizes the need for a strong for­est prod­ucts indus­try to help accom­plish for­est restora­tion work,” said For­est Ser­vice Chief Tom Tid­well. “One of the best oppor­tu­ni­ties for reduc­ing the cost of restora­tion treat­ments is to ensure strong mar­kets for the byprod­ucts of these treatments.”

This year over 100 pro­pos­als were received for the Wood Inno­va­tions grant pro­gram, high­light­ing the expand­ing use of wood as a renew­able ener­gy source and as a build­ing mate­r­i­al. The award­ed funds will stim­u­late the use of haz­ardous fuels from Nation­al For­est Sys­tem lands and oth­er forest­ed lands to pro­mote for­est health while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly gen­er­at­ing rur­al jobs.

For more infor­ma­tion on the grant and coop­er­a­tive agree­ment pro­gram, vis­it http://www.na.fs.fed.us/werc/wip/2015-rfp.shtm.

States receiv­ing fund­ing include: Alas­ka, Ariz., Calif., Colo., Ida­ho, Ill., La., Mass., Mich., Minn., Mont., N.C., Neb., Nev., Ore., Pa., S.C., S.D., Utah, Va., Vt., Wash., and Wis. See a com­plete list of the awards. 

Today, the Sec­re­tary also announced a new part­ner­ship agree­ment between USDA and the Soft­wood Lum­ber Board (SLB) to help coor­di­nate research, demon­stra­tion and mar­ket devel­op­ment for inno­v­a­tive wood build­ing tech­nolo­gies in the built envi­ron­ment. The SLB is an indus­try-fund­ed research and pro­mo­tion pro­gram designed to pro­mote the ben­e­fits and uses of soft­wood lum­ber prod­ucts in out­door, res­i­den­tial and non-res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion. Through coop­er­a­tive plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of research and pro­mo­tion­al activ­i­ties, the USDA and SLB will cre­ate jobs in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, expand wood use in the built envi­ron­ment and stim­u­late demand for for­est products.

The mis­sion of the For­est Ser­vice, part of the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, is to sus­tain the health, diver­si­ty, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the Nation’s forests and grass­lands to meet the needs of present and future gen­er­a­tions. The agency man­ages 193 mil­lion acres of pub­lic land, pro­vides assis­tance to state and pri­vate landown­ers, and main­tains the largest forestry research orga­ni­za­tion in the world. Pub­lic lands the For­est Ser­vice man­ages con­tribute more than $13 bil­lion to the econ­o­my each year through vis­i­tor spend­ing alone. Those same lands pro­vide 20 per­cent of the Nation’s clean water sup­ply, a val­ue esti­mat­ed at $7.2 bil­lion per year. The agency has either a direct or indi­rect role in stew­ard­ship of about 80 per­cent of the 850 mil­lion forest­ed acres with­in the U.S., of which 100 mil­lion acres are urban forests where most Amer­i­cans live.