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REUTEMAN: Dots worth connecting: beetle kill to motor fuel

By Rob Reuteman, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 4, 2008 at 8:16 a.m.
Updated February 4, 2008 at 8:16 a.m.

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A flurry of announcements in recent weeks about combating the pine beetle has to make you wonder. Why now? It's already infested 1.5 million acres of Colorado lodgepole pine forest, laying waste to a goodly chunk of the state's scenic beauty. Mostly we've heard that nature was allowed to take its course. It's tempting to say the devastation finally got people's attention when it began showing up along the populous Front Range. But that's only partly true.

"It's about time," said Gary Severson, executive director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. "We've been hitting this problem real hard for the past three years."

In 2007, the affected areas grew by half a million acres in one year's beetle flight, he said.

"The wind currents blew the beetles up over the Continental Divide. Now it's in Larimer, Boulder, Gilpin and Clear Creek counties. It's a lot more visible on the Front Range to a lot more people."

I first talked to Severson about pine beetles a year ago after several people told me he was the point man. He said then, "There's no market for the wood ... there's simply not enough public money to thin the forests. The only way to do this is to find some way to add value to the material."

Since then, three wood-pellet operations have started up, two in Kremm- ling and one in Walden. But none is operational yet, and each has targets of 100,000 tons of pellets a year.

A blockbuster announcement came Tuesday — a plant that would use 100 tons of beetle kill each day to produce

2 million gallons of ethanol a year. The Department of Energy said it would pay $30 million of an $88 million cellulosic ethanol plant, Colorado's first. Two Canadian firms, Suncor and Lignol, will build the plant, which will covert beetle kill into ethanol.

Suncor operates the Commerce City refineries that produce our gasoline and ethanol. Lignol successfully has tested its cellulosic technology in British Columbia, which has its own beetle-kill problems. A site for the plant has not been chosen. Suncor owns a large plot of land south of its refineries, but fears have been expressed about trucking the beetles to Denver and risking further exposure. Suncor bought a Conoco Phillips distribution terminal in Grand Junction on Dec. 6, and that's under consideration.

Cellulosic ethanol is the so-called holy grail of ethanol, since it comes from waste products that aren't part of the food chain, like corn. The growing use of corn for ethanol is blamed for higher meat prices since it drives up the cost of cattle feed. It's blamed for higher food prices because farmers are devoting so much acreage to corn rather than other crops. President Bush set a goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive by 2012.

"We see great possibilities with Lig- nor's technology," said Lisha Burnett, senior communications adviser for Suncor. "This is significant stuff, and we want to be part of it."

On Jan. 17, U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said he'd secured $8 million to reduce beetle-kill on federal land and $4 million to clear state and local land. Allard's announcement came a day after state and federal forestry officials said new aerial surveys showed that pine beetles have consumed 1.5 million acres of lodgepole forest. The state's remaining adult lodgepole forests likely will be dead within five years, they said.

The day after Suncor's announcement, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, said he would urge Congress to pledge $90 million to fight Colorado's pine-beetle infestation.

When I spoke to Severson on Friday, he was driving to Denver for lunch with the Wilderness Society to enlist its aid. Next week, he's part of a delegation of Colorado mayors and county commissioners who'll meet with U.S. Forest Service officials and our congressional delegation to up the stakes.

When you consider the notion, however far-fetched, that companies in Colorado could start producing motor fuel as a result of the plague that is ravaging our mountain majesty, those are some dots worth connecting.

Comments

  • February 4, 2008

    11:12 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    albert writes:

    Nothing but good to see more utilization, but not sure the excitement over 100 tons of biomass per day for ethanol is warranted. That's about 3.5 logging truck loads. The sawmill in Montrose uses 45 truck loads per day, without a $30 million federal subsidy.

  • February 4, 2008

    1:43 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    rreute writes:

    Somewhere in the musty legislative archives is an un-passed bill I wrote in the mid-70's which set up in Colorado an equivalent of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and institution which caught my childhood fancy when our family vacationed in Northern Wisconsin in the Depression. The purpose of the act was to house, employ, and educate dropout and adjudicated youths from 16-21 while cleaning up the huge forests which had been turned into wasteland by the Smoky Bear no-burn policy.

    We saw this scrambled forest mess while flying over it on our Education Committee trips in tiny state planes. In those days we thought much of a clearing product could be used as building materials. And penitentiary people were looking for an alternative to warehousing all of the early smoker-sniffers.

    Your article excites the imagination about other more pressing uses (ethanol for autos) for all this cellulose which is lying around in remote -- often inaccessible -- places. Not only the wood is being allowed to rot away -- think about all the kids whose minds are being wasted, expensively locked away for minor infractions.

    Imagine a chain of "CCC-like" camps with reasonably modern comforts, good shelter, good food, hard work, and sensible high-school level classes where non-college-oriented young people might learn the satisfactions of productive labor while becoming skilled operators of light- and heavy machinery. All trades might be taught in time not dedicated to forest clearing.

    I suppose someone is thinking hard about whether the huge amount of wood chips produced at each camp should be trucked to a refinery somewhere, or whether such a mini-mobile-refinery could be on site so that just the ethanol would be transported and the resulting waste ("Brewer's mash") could be spread back onto the forest floor instead of taking up space in an urban landfill.

    My bill was opposed by a bunch of different people including the energy industry I always championed. To say nothing of the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services who claimed sovereignty over vocational ed matters. (Guess who was the principal sponsor of the BOCES for all the years it took to get them into law??)

    So who will step up to reconcile all the competitors in this idea to make it work?

    Hugh C. Fowler (Senator, Littleton, 1969-1980)

  • February 4, 2008

    1:46 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    rreute writes:

    Your February 2, 2008 column "Dots worth connecting: beetle kill to motor fuel" is very interesting to me, as I am a US Forest Service retiree who has been following the bug epidemic for several years with the idea of attempting to find useful and economic solutions to this pending social and economic disaster for the rural economies of Colorado and Wyoming. With its spread to the front range, it will now become a major economic and social issue for Colorado.

    Common sense tells most of us that the dead wood will either be removed by mechanical means or future large-scale wildfire will do the job for us. Unfortunately, we have powerful political forces working to make sure that removal by mechanical means will not occur on any sizeable scale. Time is of the essence because the value of the dead trees for dimension lumber only lasts about 2 years, and we do not know how long the fiber may be valuable for biofuels. But once the trees fall to the forest floor, most if not all the value is lost.

    Elected officials and special interest groups continue to talk in circles on how to address this issue. Examples of this are:

    The recently passed Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 contains language that disqualifies all renewable biomass on all federal lands for incentives established for biofuels under this and other legislation. This is a major long-term negative for many reasons some of which I have explained in my letter to Senators Allard, Salazar and Representatives Salazar, Udall and Perlmutter. I have attached a copy for your reading. As of this date I have not received an answer.
    Congressman Udall held meetings last week with local officials and then introduced legislation that he says will mitigate the damage. Part of what he introduced was a proposal for a 90 million-dollar appropriation to be used to mitigate the potential damage. Unfortunately, he pandered to the special interests of the environmental community (who want no logging or roads) by proposing to spend the entire 90 million on lands other than the federal lands. The major acreage of bug killed timber, by far, is on the federal lands, mainly National Forests. This proposal may help the congressman politically, but it does little to address the real source of the problem.

    Best regards,

    Charles J. Hendricks

    Retired, U. S. Forest Service

  • February 4, 2008

    1:47 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    rreute writes:

    Rob,
    From your column of Feb 2 on cellulosic ethanol: The economics of the production are interesting. The owner, if his estimate is correct will invest about $58 million of a total plant cost of $88 million, the rest coming from the government.
    The plant will produce 2 million gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol. Using a crude requirement for a 10 year payback, this would mean that the supplier would have to earn about $2.90 per gallon equivalent to gasoline with the same energy content selling at about $3.90 per gallon??
    Sol Shapiro

  • February 4, 2008

    4:48 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    stuckiniowa writes:

    While I appreciate that they are looking for a way to eliminate the biomass that has been created by the beetle epidemic, why do we always go to Ethanol? Ethanol is NOT the savior that some people would have you believe. First, corn ethanol is incredibly inefficient to produce and has high sugar levels (which is necessary for the production of any alcohol.) Biomass has relatively low sugar levels compared to corn. Second, where is all the water to product said ethanol going to come from? Last I checked, the state I grew up in, was still fighting water issues and drought like conditions. Third, ethanol is not efficient as a gasoline substitute. In fact, for every gallon of E85 fuel used, we get approximately 85% of the miles that conventional unleaded gasoline would provide.

    Again - the efforts are worthwhile, but we need to find another solution besides Ethanol

  • February 5, 2008

    7:32 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    An_Engineer writes:

    Good idea to utilize the wood by clearing out the affected trees. The effort may also contribute to fighting the beetle problem.

    However, two problems with the ethanol idea.

    First, the technology to turn cellulose into ethanol is not ready yet. If this idea is treated as a demonstration of the technology with the associated costs, delays, and revamps to the equipment, then something worthwhile may be the end result. However, profits will not be realized.

    Second, the environmentalists will most likely oppose any attempts to harvest the dead trees. If this problem is not solved, then no plant of any type will be built.

  • February 5, 2008

    1:41 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    rreute writes:

    Yes the dots are worth connecting in using forest wood as a renewable energy source. Just a few dots for what it’s worth.

    There is about 15,000,000 BTUs per ton of wood this is equivalent to about 167 gallons of propane which in the mountains now sells for about $2.40. This makes a ton of wood on just an energy basis worth about $400.
    The first place to use this forest wood is in a wood chip format for use in government and commercial heating and electrical power plants.
    Build government and commercial heating and power plants in the mountain areas to provide energy and jobs there.
    Use the wood chip industry that will build up to make wood pellets which can provide heat for homes.
    When a sustainable wood chip market has been established then build some ethanol plants in the mountains to provide motor fuel and jobs. Keep in mind ethanol is worth only about 20 miles per gallon. So the $88M plant producing 2 million gallons per year provides just 40 million miles of passenger car driving. This is enough for about 3400 families usage per year, or one small town.

    The forest service talks a good line but will need to be much more cooperative in providing long term access to their dead wood.

    The fuel load is now so heavy in some places due to the forest service “Smokey the Bear” (put out the little fires) strategy that I really believe most of the forest will burn before any amount is harvested. Of course there is big money in fighting “the big one” and it also makes great news.

    Then you have the terrorist threat. Can you imagine what a small plane could do on a hot windy day dropping a line of incendiary (maybe delayed ignition) into the ready to burn forest.

    The forest has much the same problem that the health care industry has. There is prevention, cure and treatment. All the money is spent on treatment.

    Hugh DeVries

  • February 5, 2008

    2:14 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    agwest writes:

    First, there is absolutely nothing wrong with ANY use of any beetle-killed trees -- be it small wood utilization such as post and poles or furniture, wood pellet mills, or small three megawatt power generating plants. They only problem with these solutions is that added all together they will not put a dent in the problem.

    What many Coloradoans do not understand is just how much biomass our forests produce.

    Here are the numbers that we should focus on:
    > 1.5 million acres of dead pine trees
    > 300 trees per acre (conservative estimate as many of these acres are over-grown with 500-1,000 trees per acre)
    > A dead, 40 ft. tree weigh approximately 11 lbs. per foot or 440 pounds
    > Doing the math 300 trees per acre x 440 pounds per tree equals 132,000 pounds or 66 tons per acre x 1.5 million acres equals 99 MILLION tons. At 100 tons per day it will take us 2,713 YEARS to use the beetle trees.

    One additional solution is a 50 megawatt steam electric generating plant powered by biomass. These plants have been common in many states (CA, VT, NH, MI) since the 1980's so the technology is proven and the economics are time-tested.

    Let's assume we do we want to harvest beetle trees from every one of the 1.5 million acres (wilderness Areas, national parks and monuments, sensitive wildlife habitat and riparian zones would all be off-limits for biomass harvesting.) Plus areas above 10,000 feet or extremely steep terrain would prevent economical biofuel harvesting. So let's assume we will only remove beetle killed trees from one-fourth of the acres or 375,000 acres. Using the math above we still have 24.75 MILLION tons of dead trees.

    A 50 megawatt steam generating power plant using biomass needs 450,000 bone dry tons annually. Thus, harvesting forest biomass from only one-fourth of the impacted beetle-killed acres we have a 55 year supply of fuel for ONE plant.

    Consuming 450,000 bone dry tons per year similar power plants in CA are paying $40 to $50 per ton for wood chips or $2,640 per acre.

    A 50 megawatt power plant costs approximately $1.25 million per megawatt to construct, thus we need $125 million dollars. Thanks to Rep. Al White’s recent legislation, we can now form county forest management districts in Colorado similar to our county weed management and fire districts. Thus, we could form a five-county forest management district in the beetle impacted areas. With government help in the form of $10 million in loan guarantees, a $10 million commitment from a power wholesaler such as Tri-State Electric or a retailer such as local electric co-ops or Excel Energy, we could offer a bond sale to finance the power plant.

    A 50 megawatt biomass fueled electric power plant will pay for itself and for forest rehabilitation with no government subsidy other than loan guarantees. Let’s begin.

    Charles Henry
    Grand County Forest Stewardship Assn.
    Granby

  • February 6, 2008

    7:13 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    An_Engineer writes:

    Mr. Henry,
    Excelent presentation of the data and facts. I agree with and support your concept.

    It would be good if this type of plan was supported by local, state, and federal government entities...

  • February 7, 2008

    4:59 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    rreute writes:

    Dear Mr. Reuteman:

    Thank you for your article on beetle kill. Here at our nonprofit, iCAST, www.icastusa.org, we have studied the challenges the beetle kill problem presents Colorado. We have worked in the wood pellet area for three years. We have worked in the biomass, biodiesel areas for three years. While we don’t have the solution, we know we need a comprehensive solution that brings together many companies and business oriented ideas to deal with this problem in a manner that maximizes the value of the timber, minimizes the ecological/environmental harm, and builds sustainable businesses in Colorado while doing so. While we applaud the Suncor plant, 100 tons of beetle kill each day, sounds like a lot, but it is only five truckloads of trees a day. So it is really on the small size, while the problem and the challenge is on the massive size.

    We are also huge fans of wood pellets as we are designing a wood pellet plan for Aquila in the Canon City area. We would promote a large number of geographically dispersed wood pellet plants across Colorado. We are fairly convinced that the “three wood-pellet” plants that you have said have “started up” have, in fact not started up and since they are fairly close together geographically, running all three is not sustainable since they will run out of wood in their area. Transporting this wood over 25 miles often is so costly that it kills the economic value of the trees today. Maybe rail transport of the trees might change this equation, but, in general, for sustainability, it is important to process the trees in close proximity to where they have grown, and use the fruits of this wood as close to the source of the wood as humanly possible.

    We find a huge hole in Colorado’s effort to deal with the beetle kill problem. Where is the Statewide plan to deal with this challenge? Where are the business partners at the table who are going to make the best use of the vast amounts of beetle kill wood that we will have throughout the state?

    We know this is a damn hard problem to solve. Many people in Colorado are working on this and CSU just held a two week conference on the topic where we gave a presentation.

    Just reducing beetle kill by cutting trees and putting them in landfills is a terrible idea, but it seems it is the best, worst idea, that on a large scale is on the table today.

    I urge you to go beyond “motor fuel” and urge your readers and the Governor to declare a state disaster and develop a plan, with strong private sector support, that will not only take these trees for all of the valuable ways the wood can be used, but also use this opportunity to reforest our lands with diverse strands of timber so one pest can never destroy our forests again.

    Herb Rubenstein

    Chief Operating Officer

    iCAST - The International Center for

    Appropriate and Sustainable Technology

    www.icastusa.org

  • February 7, 2008

    5:04 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    rreute writes:

    more from icast:

    We have a solution to offer: It is tied to our belief in using local resources for local benefit. The answer should lie in establishing ‘appropriately sized’ biomass utilization business ventures in various locations across Colorado, producing a variety of products such as poles and posts, bio-energy (both heat and electricity), bio-fuels (ethanol and biodiesel), animal bedding, pellets, briquettes, compost, siding, pallets, flooring, lumber, etc.
    Unfortunately, all this is easier said than done. One of the primary stumbling blocks faced by entrepreneurs is access to a steady supply of the biomass (forest waste) for the long term (5 years as a minimum to be able to recoup the capital costs). The USFS and BLM are unable to do so primarily because of budget constraints. Some policy decisions and incentives will help, but to Herb’s point, what is needed most is a comprehensive plan and agreement by all stakeholders to execute on the plan. We at iCAST will be glad to do our part in solving this problem.

    Ravi Malhotra

    Email: ravi@icastusa.org