[Anthony Nekut:] | 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 [combined heat and power] for electricity and heating. | This use of biofuels is far more efficient than large scale | conversion to liquid transportation fuels.
I agree, and in fact I don't think Patzek would disagree. The basic difference is between burning biomass directly and putting it through some complex conversion process for use further down the line. It should be noted that I haven't actually had a chance to read the paper in detail myself (I'm waiting till I have a chance to get home and print it out), so what I'm saying is based on Patzek's presentation at the Triple Crisis conference. At a Q&A session following the presentation, I asked him for an explanation of his cellulosic ethanol "Energy efficiency" slide, which appears as Figure 14 on page 18 of the OECD paper, and then asked whether it was a valid though very rough summary of that explanation to say that these comparative figures represent the difference between the energy obtained at the end of the processing chain and the theoretical maximum the same biomass would yield if burned directly under ideal conditions. He agreed with that characterization. So it would appear that your plan to use local biomass for local space heating is in line with Patzek's findings. | 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. What a great idea! | 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. I sure hope you succeed in this. Please let us know how it works out. | 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. What I'm looking for (living three miles from town on a state highway) is an all-electric with high performance and very short range that can be charged up every night from our grid-tied solar array. I'm told that a company in Ithaca is gearing up to produce and (more importantly) maintain retrofits that will meet these design criteria; I'll let them pipe up on this list as and when they decide to start soliciting business. Jon _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
