Jon, Karl - I read the Patzek paper and agree with his conclusions regarding large scale use of biofuels for transportation. There are, however, sensible, niche applications for biomass energy which are worthwhile. I am working on a project which aims to promote use of locally, sustainably produced forest biomass for local space heating, with possible future expansion into distributed, small scale CHP for electricity and heating. This use of biofuels is far more efficient than large scale conversion to liquid transportation fuels.
The potential of forest biomass is well known but remains underutilized in the United States. The majority of New York forests, which cover about 60 percent of its land area, are privately owned. These privately held forest lands, many of which were farm lands now reverted to forests, are predominantly unmanaged or undermanaged by their owners. It is a common practice for owners to remove high-grade sawtimber from their forests and then sell or subdivide the land leaving behind unhealthy, fragmented forest land. While this practice may produce the best short term financial return to the owner, it is not sustainable and threatens to continue to degrade the quality of New York's forests. New opportunities for landowners can be made available by developing an expanded market for low-grade wood in the form of biomass. Continuous, sustainable production of low-grade wood along with high-grade sawtimber could reverse this downward forest quality trend. I am in the process of coauthoring some grant proposals to NYSERDA to fund a demonstration project here in Ithaca. Funding status should be known by year's end. If funded, I will share more information on the project and solicit involvement by the ST community. BTW - for local trips I drive an all-electric car and charge the batteries with 100% green electrons. It has only 25 hp so the performance is low compared to most cars and its range is under 50 miles/charge. Once you get used to it, however, it is perfectly adequate. Tony Nekut _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
