Wood

I looked at the Forest Bioeconomy Act, a bipartisan bill recently introduced.
Here’s an article in Woodworking:
Here’s a link to the bill text.

. — U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jim Justice (R-WV), and Steve Daines (R-MT) have introduced the bipartisan Forest Bioeconomy Act. The legislation would help expand forest product research and build new markets by formally establishing an Office of Technology Transfer at the United States Forest Service (USFS) and authorize $5 million in appropriations. By expanding product research, this legislation will help create new jobs in rural Georgia.

The Officer of Technology Transfer’s mission shall be to expand the commercial impact of the research investments of the Forest Service and to provide for the commercialization of technologies that support the mission of the Forest Service.

The Forest Bioeconomy Act would also establish a new Mass Timber Science and Education program at colleges and universities across the country to respond to emerging research needs of architects, developers, and the forest products industry. Senator Warnock has cosponsored legislation in 2023 aimed at modernizing and improving the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program to ensure the continued availability of reliable data and analyses.

With this new bill, the Secretary of Agriculture, in coordination with the Secretary of Energy, shall expand research relating to the use of wood by:

Facilitating the establishment of new markets, including nontraditional markets, for material produced from forest management projects that typically has little or no commercial value.
Increasing the economic viability of manufacturing products using material described in [the above bullet point].
Feedstock for the production of renewable fuel, including sustainable aviation fuel.

I’m hoping that people we know who are already working on these issues (what I have been calling the Holy Garil can tap into the “expanded research.”
Here’s a link to the bill. I think that it’s confusing to some of us because tech transfer has been kind of a generic concept in our world. Think tree-marking technology, or nursery practices. The idea is generally, some folks come up with a helpful technology and the role of whatever area of experts is to give that technology to those who can use it. This seems like a different definition, more specific.

They are establishing a new Office of Technology Transfer with a mission

(A) to expand the commercial impact of the research investments of the Forest Service;
(B) to provide for the commercialization of technologies that support the mission of the Forest Service.

There will be a Chief Commercialization Officer and a Technology Transfer Working Group.

These are the key performance indicators:

(A) the number of cooperative research and development agreements entered into by
the Forest Service under section 12 of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of
1980 (15 U.S.C. 3710a) during the preceding year;
(B) the number of agreements with partnership intermediaries entered into by the Forest Service under section 23 of the Stevenson Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 (15 24 U.S.C. 3715) during the preceding year; and
(C) the number of licenses or other use authorizations issued by the Forest Service for patents held by the Forest Service during the
preceding year.

The bill authorizes $5 mill to be appropriated. It amends the National Forest Foundation Act by inserting tech transfer and commercialization.” I wonder where funding collected from FS patents goes? Obviously the FS has a bunch, as they had or have their own patent attorney.

There’s an innovative voucher pilot program to innovation voucher pilot program

to accelerate product development, demonstration,
and commercialization in the forest products sector.
(2) VOUCHERS.—Under the pilot program established under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall
provide vouchers to small business concerns (as defined in section 3 of the Small Business Act (15
25 U.S.C. 632)) to be used at research facilities of the 1 Forest Service for research, development, demonstration, technology transfer, skills training and workforce development, or commercial application activities.

There are different matches for different voucher topics, but the Sec can reduce the match if the

Secretary determines the reduction to be necessary and appropriate, taking into account any 8 technological risk relating to the activity

Then there’s a Mass Timber Science and Education Program to supplement current research and educational activities of colleges and universities.

There’s a focused research program (sorry about the line numbers, hope you can read past them. Note “practical”, “focused”, “strategic.”

(1) To provide practical research responsive to
5 the needs of architects, real estate developers, and
6 the forest products industry, including assessments
7 of carbon impacts in the originating forests and the
8 end use of mass timber in the built environment.
9 (2) To develop focused, strategic lines of new
10 research responsive to the needs described in para11 graph (1), including research relating to flamma12 bility and performance during a fire, structural char13 acteristics, energy use and savings, acoustics, and
14 slab construction composed of hybrid materials.
15 (3) To solicit competitive funding proposals
16 from scientists selected through a rigorous peer-re17 view process designed to ensure the best projects are
18 funded.
19 (4) To disseminate research findings so that architects, real estate developers, and the forest products industry are aware of, understand, and can use
22 the information to make sound decisions and implement projects.
24 (5) To develop and facilitate the voluntary
25 adoption of a curriculum for building structures
1 using mass timber for use in schools of engineering
2 and architecture that includes—
3 (A) structural design; and
4 (B) the possibilities, benefits, and limitations of using mass timber in construction.
*************
The Secretary needs to develop a strategy to submit to Congress.

(1) an assessment of the current state of knowledge about mass timber and tall wood buildings;
13 (2) an integrated approach to improve knowledge sharing on the manufacturing and use of mass
15 timber products;
16 (3) an approach for mass timber project monitoring and evaluation; and
18 (4) an approach for setting research priorities
19 for the program.

And there’s a stakeholder advisory group for the program.

(A) a Forest Service scientist;
1 (B) a researcher from a college or university;
3 (C) a representative of a trade association;
4 (D) an architect or real estate developer;
5 (E) a representative of an agency or unit
6 of a local government that is responsible for the
7 issuance of permits for building construction
8 (commonly known as a ‘‘local approving agency’’);
10 (F) a representative of a forest products
11 company; and
12 (G) a representative of a nongovernmental
13 organization with experience—
14 (i) designing or constructing tall wood
15 buildings; or
16 (ii) complying with or revising related
17 building codes.

And the funding should come from FS R&D (not FIA), and not be more than $4 mill.

Many of you have been following the great gas stove controversy (who actually decides which of the many health/environment/climate enhancing ideas to generate campaigns about?). Perhaps wood stoves are on the list. Perhaps they’re next.

It’s 0 F this morning where I live, so I’ve been thinking about our woodstove. It’s cheaper than propane and gets rid of waste wood, and that’s all I really need to know for now. But..

I ran across this article by some folks with the Census Bureau, published in 2018, with data from the 2016 census.. see the table above.

As I looked around, it wasn’t always clear who uses wood heat and who uses it as a primary source. Seems like many more folks would use it as a backup. But I’m not sure that there is literature on this.

Here’s what the American Lung Association has to say about that as of Jan. 3, 2023:

As the weather gets colder, thoughts of curling up with a mug of hot cocoa in front of a roaring fire become more appealing. Though indoor wood-burning stoves and heaters may have a quaint and traditional feel, they also produce harmful toxins that could damage your lungs and affect the air quality.

So, before you throw another log on the fire, it is important to understand how wood-burning devices work and how to protect your family’s lungs:

Health Effects Caused by Wood Smoke

The smoke from wood-burning devices, such as stoves and heaters, contains fine particle pollution, and hazardous air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides benzene and formaldehyde. Particle pollution is especially dangerous because these tiny particles can get deep into the organs, harming not just the lungs, but also blood vessels, the heart and brain. Wood smoke can cause coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks, and lead to serious health issues, such as heart attacks, stroke and premature death. Wood smoke also adds carbon dioxide and methane to the air, both of which significantly contribute to climate change.

Protecting Those at High Risk

Wood smoke is not good for any set of lungs, but it can be particularly harmful to those with vulnerable lungs, such as children and older adults. Additionally, those with lung diseases, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are also more affected by wood smoke. Breathing the smoke can easily cause coughing and asthma attacks.

Outdoor Pollution Created by Wood Smoke

Wood stoves often run 24 hours a day, pumping wood smoke and toxins into the outdoor air. If wood-burning stoves or heaters are affecting your neighborhood’s air, take steps to protect your family: encourage children, older adults and those living with lung disease to remain indoors; use the recirculate function on air conditioners; and keep windows and vents closed.

Finding Wood Alternatives

To reduce indoor and outdoor pollution from wood-burning devices, switch to cleaner devices such as natural gas stoves and heaters, and make sure they are fully vented to the outdoors. If you are unable to switch, use pellets and dry hardwood for a cleaner and more efficient burn. You can also buy a cleaner wood-burning device. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted new standards for cleaner and more energy efficient wood-burning devices in 2015. Many devices currently meet the 2020 standards and have hangtags showing this certification.

This winter, make changes to your wood heater and stove so you and your lungs can enjoy a cozy evening.

So burning wood “contributes significantly to climate change” and natural gas is preferable- because it doesn’t have smoke, indoor or outdoor. For whatever reason, I don’t think people who use wood from fuel treatments (otherwise burned in the atmosphere in piles) are included in the Lung Association’s thinking on this.

Otherwise, I can see where they are coming from. Some of us live in urban areas where there is too much wood smoke. But…many of us do not. I think it’s good to be aware of the dangers, especially to people with breathing problems, but, on the other hand many people can’t afford to keep switching out heat sources,either more current wood stoves or other heaters. Further, having wood as a backup allows us to have heating diversity in case of price rises in either propane or electric rates. It seems important at the home level to not be locked in to one source of energy, especially as our sources are transitioning. Especially in parts of the country where heating is a matter of life and death.

Meanwhile, this report from the Guardian talks about what you can do to reduce the impacts (the Guardian is located Great Britain).

The government is phasing out the sale of wet wood, which produces more smoke, but the people in the study used only dry, seasoned wood. Wood and coal burning in homes is estimated to cause almost 40% of outdoor tiny particle pollution, but the new research is among the first to analyse indoor pollution in real-life settings. Almost 16% of people in the south-east of England use wood fuel, and 18% in Northern Ireland, according to 2016 government data, and about 175,000 wood burners are sold annually.

“Our findings are a cause for concern,” said Rohit Chakraborty, of the University of Sheffield, who led the study. “It is recommended that people living with those particularly susceptible to air pollution, such as children, the elderly or vulnerable, avoid using wood-burning stoves. If people want to use them, we recommend minimising the time the stove is open during lighting or refuelling.”

Wood burners cause less indoor pollution than open fires. “But every time you open the door, you reduce the stove to an open fire and particulate matter floods into the home,” he said. The peaks take an hour or two to dissipate. “But by the time it comes down, someone opens the door again to refuel and you get spike after spike,” Chakraborty said. Some burners have filters, but these only reduce the pollution being vented outside.

Meanwhile as of November of last year (according to this pro-woodstove UK site)

The use of wood-burning stoves is growing in popularity in the UK, especially so with the advent of highly efficient Ecodesign stoves and, more recently, with the growing instability of gas and electricity prices, people have found the idea of self-sufficiency very appealing.

That article rounds up what countries in Europe are doing. Like I said, these folks sell woodstoves. Still it’s interesting what they say about countries in Europe, for example…

The Netherlands – Like with other countries, there is a rush to buy firewood in preparation for the winter. The rush for wood in The Netherlands usually starts in September, but due to the war in Ukraine, people started this rush in July, according to one wood supplier. The Netherlands aims to ban fossil fuels for new heating insulations from 2026. This could mean an increase in Ecodesign stove sales – renowned for their green credentials. We already supply a number of our stoves to The Netherlands.

Poland – Due to the spiralling price increases in gas and electricity, there is a shift towards burning wood in Poland. This is the same for several other nearby countries. However, Poland is far less affluent than many of the aforementioned Scandinavian countries, and so a key driver for using wood to stay warm is financial.

Any other ideas for minimizing impacts without buying new stoves or switching heating sources?

IMHO, this is a really really good story.  Unfortunately, it’s for subscribers of the Sacramento Bee only.  Fortunately, they have a 99 cent day rate (yay, wish everyone had that). There are also excellent videos and photos.  I think it’s particularly interesting to contrast the kind of conversations in California with those of Oregon.

State and federal officials, as well as forestry experts, say California doesn’t have nearly enough lumber mills to process the trees — dead or alive — that need to come out of the state’s 33 million acres of forestland to reduce the risk of megafires. California suffers from a similar shortage of biomass plants, which make electricity out of trees and brush hauled out of the woods.

So the timber stays in the forests.

“It’s fuel for the next fire,” said Tim Robards, a staff chief at Cal Fire who oversees forest health and wood products issues.

Robards said the problem has worsened in the past two years, during which 6.7 million acres burned. The surge of dead and dying trees is clogging the state’s meager fleet of mills and biomass plants, he said.

The problem is intensifying at the very moment state and federal agencies are trying to reduce the density of California’s forests. The U.S. Forest Service, which manages 20 million acres of California land, says the shortage of mills and plants makes it hard to even plan the fuels-reduction projects it wants to undertake.

“We lack sufficient infrastructure to make as much progress as everyone would like us to do,” said Larry Swan, a wood utilization and biomass specialist with the Forest Service.

There’s no obvious quick fix for “this deficit of capacity,” as Robards called it. The facilities have been in decline for decades — lumber mills have been disappearing since the early 1990s, largely because of environmental restrictions, and the biomass industry has been battered by competition from cheaper energy sources.

“We had this robust infrastructure,” said Mike De Lasaux, a retired forester with UC Cooperative Extension. “Now we see these humongous piles of treetops and small trees that have no place to go.”

There’s a detailed discussion of biomass and the difficulties of getting biomass plants established.

It’s a tragedy,” said Brett Storey, the recently retired biomass manager for Placer County. “All of that material would be utilized instead of going up in smoke every summer.”
Storey spent years trying to get a biomass plant built near Lake Tahoe. A proposed site near Kings Beach faltered when residents and local officials objected to an industrial facility opening in the Tahoe basin. County officials then chose a spot near Truckee, but that fell apart four years ago when they couldn’t make a deal with the area’s electric company, Liberty Utilities, to buy the plant’s energy.
Now the county is trying again. After the Caldor Fire nearly burned down South Lake Tahoe this summer, county officials are taking a fresh look at the biomass project.
“There’s just a great sense of urgency,” said Kerri Timmer, the county’s regional forest health coordinator.
The state has tried to revive the industry, with some success. An auction-based program called BioRAM, which requires utilities to purchase biomass power, has enabled some plants to garner higher prices for their electricity than they can negotiate on their own. The program has saved at least one plant that was about to shut down, Burney Forest Power in Shasta County.
But not everyone’s eligible.
In the Sierra County town of Loyalton, the American Renewable Power biomass plant was consuming 100,000 tons of wood annually until it closed last year. One reason was price: Because of issues around its connection to the power grid, the Loyalton plant wasn’t eligible for the BioRAM program and couldn’t negotiate a decent rate for its energy.
Jeff Holland, who runs a logging company near Placerville, purchased the Loyalton site for $825,000 and is trying to resume operations. But startup costs are higher than expected, and he isn’t sure when it will reopen. He thinks the state must do more to support biomass.
“Logical thinking people who are tired of breathing smoke and tired of losing our national treasures believe biomass should be in the picture,” Holland said

Biomass plants are so limited in number, it often doesn’t pay to haul the wood out of forests that have been thinned. Instead, it gets stacked up and burned in the open, polluting the air. “For a lot of that biomass that’s being produced, particularly in the forested areas, there isn’t a market for it,” said Steve Eubanks, a retired Forest Service official who’s trying to build a biomass plant near Grass Valley. “They’re either leaving it on the ground or piling it or burning it.”
Often, the piles sit a long while. The regional air district has to issue a burn permit. The weather has to cooperate — if it’s too windy, the fire could blow out of control, as when the Caples Fire burned part of the Eldorado National Forest in 2019.
“It’s a struggle to burn our piles, and, yes, we have a backlog,” said Swan of the Forest Service.

I recommend a read of the whole piece. What seems to be missing for me is that our energy policies don’t reflect the risk reduction benefits of biomass removal. Biomass can only win by being cheaper than wind and solar. But nuclear folks will tell us that intermittent energy sources need backup. Then wind and solar folks will point to batteries or pumped hyro or homes as batteries, all unproven technologies at scale, plus issues around mining and trade in minerals needed for batteries. The old decarbonizing technology horserace. But today we could be running forest biomass plants with the technology we have And do risk reduction for wildfires, and contribute to air quality (instead of burning in piles). Perhaps the difficulty is ultimately policy siloing. And California’s working to tackle it.