Description

ANNOTATION: This study examines the use of woody residues, primarily from forest harvesting or wood products manufacturing operations (and to a limited degree from urban wood wastes), as a feedstock for direct-combustion bioenergy systems for electrical or thermal power applications. Opportunities for utilizing biomass for energy at several different scales, with an emphasis on larger scale electrical power generation at stand-alone facilities, and on smaller scale facilities (thermal heating only) such as governmental, educational, or other institutional facilities, are examined. ABSTRACT: Wildfires, hazardous fuel buildups, small-diameter timber, wildland-urban interface zones, biomass. These are some of the terms becoming familiar to communities throughout the Western United States after the record-breaking fire seasons of the past decade. Although small-diameter stems are generally expensive to remove and often have limited utilization options, the need to reduce wildfire hazard has become increasingly important with the expansion of the wildland-urban interface across the Western United States. An estimated 73 million acres of national forest land in Western States (397 million acres across all ownerships) have been identified as high-priority treatment areas. Nearly 3,800 communities near federal lands in Western States are considered to be at high risk of wildfire.