Woody Biomass Grant Program

Nippon Paper Industries and Port Angeles Hardwood, and the Quinault Indian Nation are all grant recipients for the 2012 Woody Biomass Utilization Program, which focuses on helping communities and rural businesses improve efficiencies in processing and using woody biomass removed from forest restoration activities. USDA Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell talks about the nature of the grant projects.

TIDWELL: These twenty projects are spread through twelve different states and they’re primarily focused on using wood for either thermal or to produce electricity. But in addition to the $4 million all of these grants come with a match of at least one to one, sometimes two to one, so this is an investment that helps these communities, helps these businesses, helps the universities - hospitals be able to make a very good investment to not only reduce their energy costs but also to create another market for us to be able to find a use for this material that needs to be removed from our forests, plus support the jobs that it takes to do the restoration work.

Grant projects will use woody forest material such as insect killed trees removed for wildfire prevention. Recipients use funds from the WBUP program to secure engineering services necessary for final design, permitting and cost analysis. Past award project examples include a biomass-power generation facility, a non-pressurized hot water system for a hospital, and the engineering design of a woody biomass boiler for steam at a sawmill.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.