Farewell, forests

...The Woodex product, one of the major pelletized fuels, was patented in 1977 by Rudolf Gunnerman, a German immigrant...

...Entrepreneurs across the country are now establishing franchise operations that will convert forest fiber into wood pellets bound together by pressure or a thermoplastic additive...

...Already, existing planting equipment can replace clear-cut forests with seedling trees planted row on row...

...Soil fertility is threatened, too, by shortened tree "crop" rotation: Hybrid poplar trees have been developed that grow six feet a year and can be harvested in as little as ten years...

...Woodex, New England, joins some twenty other Woodex franchises around the world, including a few giant multinational corporations, which have bought territorial rights to develop the Woodex process...

...With the switch to wood heat already putting pressure on the forests in some localities, conservationists view these new prospects with chagrin...

...So far, it's been business as usual in Washington, with no word on recent wood energy developments...

...Despite fluctuations in oil supply, the use of wood heat has continued to expand, evolving from an "alternate" into a "mainstream" energy source in many parts of the United States...

...In northern New England, about half of all households burn wood for home heating...

...This vision proJeff Kopseng jects a world in which natural and artificial forests provide the raw materials for every imaginable kind of manufactured product, much as fossil fuels do now...

...Hundreds of manufacturers now use wood products for process or space heating, and the publicly owned Burlington Electric Department in Burlington, Vermont, is even producing electricity from waste wood...

...Most others, like Woodex, New England, will market the fuel to businesses, industries, and, ultimately, the home-heating market...

...Meanwhile, wood-energy systems developers are at work perfecting automatic delivery devices that will shuttle those wood pellets from a basement storage bin directly into a house's central heating system without the homeowner even feeding the firebox or coming in contact with the fuel...

...However, some backyard woodcutters have already resolved to resist the new corporate dependence wood pellet heating implies, and to stick to harvesting free cordwood from the forests' dead, diseased, and low-quality trees...

...Industries have also caught on...

...Because modern tree-harvesting techniques remove the entire tree (whereas traditional methods left leaves and branches behind to decay and fertilize the soil), ecologists are also concerned about the effects of whole-tree harvesting on forest soil fertility and long-term health...

...New sophisticated wood-fired central heating systems now exist that burn the fuel by forcing hot air into a turbulent, high-temperature combustion zone, yielding maximum efficiency while producing virtually no chimney-clogging creosote or atmospheric pollutants—the two major banes of wood burning in the past...

...Woodexof New England, a Boston-based firm, plans by the mid-1980s to have forty plants scattered throughout the New England-New York region, collectively turning out thousands of tons per day of pelletized Woodex fuel made from sawmill residues and other forest biomass...

...In the Woodex process, waste biomass materials are shredded, dehydrated, and extruded through pelletizing dies at extremely high pressure and temperature...

...On another fuel front, new developments are making it more economical to break cellulose in woody materials down into sugars that could be fermented into ethanol...

...Pullman-Swindell has acquired rights to develop the process in Brazil, and Bio-Solar and Shell Oil of Canada recently formed a joint-venture corporation to develop the technology in the Pacific rim countries...

...When commercialized, this technology, used to produce automotive fuel, would also compete for the forests...

...Still other sturdy kitchen units, imported from France and Austria, can not only cook dinner but also heat an entire home and produce all the household's hot water at the same time...

...We can use the forest resource wisely, without turning our woodlands into intensively managed energy farms," notes one state energy official, "but to do that, enlightened government planning and policy direction is required...

...The first municipal utility to squeeze power from trees in modern times, Burlington Electric plans to have a 50-megawatt wood-fired generating plant on line by 1983...

...The dangers Pardo foresees are not limited to the woodlands themselves...

...While promising to make even contemporary wood-heating methods obsolete, they may also pose a threat to the future of the nation's forest resource...

...Meanwhile, pellet-burning equipment will be moving into dealer showrooms—and pelletized fuel will be for sale through retail stores and established fuel dealers, perhaps as early as this year...

...Some licensees plan to make fuel pellets solely to produce power for on-site corporate installations...

...A wholesale onslaught on the nation's forests to meet short-term energy needs would be an environmental disaster," warns Richard Pardo of the American Forestry Association...

...While massive domestic energy development projects now threaten the forests as well as the air, water, and land, an acre of woodland, properly managed, can provide a half cord of wood annually, on a sustained yield basis without environmental harm—that is, forever...

...Woodex of New England is keeping some pretty heady company within the International Association of Bio-energy Producers, the Woodex licensees' association...

...There are also licensees in Finland and Turkey...

...Other Woodex franchise owners include Pullman-Swindell (a subsidiary of the Pullman Corp., recently acquired by Wheela-brator-Frye), Shell Oil of Canada Ltd., and Philip Morris Industrial...

...Other technological advances, however, are more ominous...

...One franchise owner will burn the output of three 300-ton-a-day Woodex plants to fire a 50-megawatt electric generating station in southern California...

...The necessary heavy-duty whole-tree harvesting equipment is already in the development stage...

...The vision industry experts project is one of trucks dumping loads of forest fuel pellets through basement windows in cities and suburban areas across the nation, much as coal was delivered to households seventy-five years ago...

...During processing, the biomass structure is modified and no additional ingredients are necessary to bind the fibers...

...they also include soil erosion and a consequent threat to the nation's waterways...

...Think again Michael Harris When the 1973 Arab oil embargo cut the pipelines that fuel America, the scramble to find replacement home-heating methods led to a renaissance in wood-heating: A new industry began replacing Grandpa's pot-bellied parlor stove with airtight, highly efficient wood-burning heaters...

...As these markets develop, they may be able to pay a premium price for whole-tree chips...

...a third rely on forest fuels as the major source of their winter warmth...

...But there is another, less positive side of the story...

...Design engineers and marketing experts are now being recruited to shape the campaign...

...According to many wood-energy experts, the pelletizing process virtually demands clear-cut, whole-tree harvesting and chipping, in turn heavily mechanizing and accelerating the exploitation of the forest fuel resource...

...Here, fast growing hybrid tree species would be cropped intensively, sown, fertilized, cultivated, sprayed, and harvested mechanically like corn...

...Further, as one forester remarked, "Wood pellets are only the tip of the biomass-to-energy iceberg...

...The promise to consumers is that for the first time, wood pellets will place forest fuels under the control of the familiar living room wall thermostat, providing the convenience of oil and releasing dedicated wood burners from cutting trees, splitting logs, sawing cordwood, and performing all the other chores that now mark the path of forest fuel from stump to stove...

...Michael Harris, a free-lance writer in Loudon Ridge, New Hampshire, has written on the timber industry for The Progressive...

...And an array of small firms hold pellet process franchises across the United States...

...Manufacturers of wood combustion and gasification equipment are saying that green chips look like the most economical renewable fuel for their purposes, that peptization is an unnecessary intermediate step...

...To broaden the scenario even further, for decades wood chemists have been predicting that, as new mechanized forest harvesting technologies are developed and become adopted by the forest industry, "biomass energy farms" will take the place of natural forests...

...Five million modern wood-burning stoves now perk away in the kitchens and living rooms of America, and the Department of Energy recently estimated that wood provides Americans with two-thirds as much energy as does nuclear power...