Wisconsin's Focus on Energy Environmental and Economic Research and Development (EERD) Program has awarded $988,810 in grants to nine researchers for biomass energy-related studies.
One of the studies is being led by Anna Haines, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and the director of the university’s Center for Land Use Education. Haines was awarded $54,491 for an 18-month feasibility study concerning the availability of feedstock for a proposed wood gasification plant at the Stevens Point campus.
“We (currently) have a coal plant,” Haines said. “That's pretty problematic when you're trying to go completely renewable and so we have been talking about maybe wood gasification would work. It would do a lot to get us off coal. But do we actually have the biomass or do we have to truck it in from God-knows-where, from all over the Midwest? This particular grant is looking at that question: ‘Can we get the biomass that we would need to run this wood gasification unit?’”
Haines said the study will look at the various woody biomass feedstocks that are available and how the woody biomass might be procured.
Article Continues After Advertisement
Another study that received EERD funds is being led by Ed Nelson, a researcher at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Science Services. Nelson was awarded $44,486 for a one-year study to determine the willingness of Wisconsin farmers to adopt practices and to participate in programs to sequester carbon. Nelson said those practices might include no-till farming, planting prairie, or keeping lands that previously were enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program intact instead of converting those lands to row crops. Nelson said the Wisconsin DNR will conduct focus group interviews with agricultural landowners around the state.
Donald Peterson at Sustainable Resources Institute Inc. in Florence, Wis., received $95,550 for a two-year study that will assess the availability of woody biomass in Wisconsin. Peterson said the goal is to replicate the Wisconsin Wood Residue Study of 1993, the most current assessment. In addition, the assessment will create a directory of all companies in the state that currently produce woody biomass from trees, including loggers with chipping operations, tree service companies, and other land-clearing operations. The assessment will also update a 2005 report titled “Real Cost of Producing Logging Residue for Biomass Fuels.”
The following researchers also received grant awards:
- Carol Barford at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment received $148,913 for a two-year study titled “Wisconsin Farm Biomass Production and the Emerging Carbon Economy.”
- John Katers at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Department of Natural and Applied Sciences received $47,914 for a one-year study titled “Life Cycle Analysis of Pellet Fuels.”
- Mark Rickenbach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology was awarded $76,940 for an 18-month study titled “Carbon Sequestration on Private Forests: Understanding the Silent Majority.”
- David Sample at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Science Services received $186,643 for a three-year study titled “An Ecosystem Management Approach to Biomass Production in Southern Wisconsin.”
- Ronald Zalesny at the United States Forest Service Northern Research Station was awarded $169,020 for a 30-month study titled “Land Use, Soil Health, and Water Quality Changes with Woody Energy Crop Production in Wisconsin and Minnesota.”
Mathew Dornbush at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Department of Natural and Applied Sciences was awarded $164,853 for an 18-month study titled “Maximizing Ecological Services and Economic Returns by Targeted Establishment of Biomass Yielding Grasslands in Wisconsin.”