California's biomass industry has its origins in the Energy Crisis of the 1970s. Government policies encouraged the development of alternate, renewable resources. Biomass plants take vegetative wastes (such as urban green waste and forest residues) and use them to generate electricity. Approximately 2% of California's huge electrical demand is satisfied by biomass alone.
Electricity is made by inducing electrons into a current. In a biomass plant, the processbegins by carefully combusting fuel in a boiler. Because of modern pollution control technology,the emissions of key air pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) andparticulate matter (PM) are drastically reduced when compared with burning that same material in the open.
In the forested regions of the state, biomass plants have allowed land managers to economically thin hundreds of thousands of acres. Watershed health and productivity has been improved by the reduction of stagnant 'ladder' fuels which can easily lift surface wildfire into the forest canopy, resulting in the nightmare of catastrophic wildfire.
Recent federal initiatives to greatly expand the use of prescribed fire to treat wildland fuels have appeared to ignore the social benefits of mechanized forestry operations. To industry, the effort appears eerily like the even-age forest management regime the Forest Service promoted right up to the listing of the Northern Spotted Owl in 1989. Is the institutional push for high numbers of 'black acres' replacing the old timber targets?
Forest thinning and utilization of small logs and biomass provide jobs and valuable products to society. Although prescribed fire is a valuable tool, its use should be considered secondary to mechanized thinning in most forestry settings. Pretreatment of dense fuels with mechanized equipment helps ensure safer, more responsible use of prescribed fire in a watershed. -
You can reach Bill at 530-365-9172/bkeye@snowcrest.net