- evaluating wood availability using Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) and harvest information from tax records and county
foresters to identify actually harvested amounts and theoretically
available amounts;
- surveying forest landowners about their attitudes and decisions
around harvesting wood;
- interviewing loggers to understand their concerns and practices,
and the network of suppliers and forest workers providing the
communities' wood energy;
- surveying local households to better
understand the demand for wood fuel and how it is used, as well as
sustainability priorities for wood energy and wood energy consumers'
choices and values; and
- comparing data to community-wide priorities, plans and values
for future decisions.
Researchers further examined the
forested lands that could be suitable for sustainable wood biomass
harvest in the study areas using GIS and current public data. Lands
unsuitable for harvesting due to steepness, open water or wetlands,
limited forest production potential, or roads, buildings, and other
non-forest land uses were removed from the calculations. The likely
per-acre annual growth of low-quality wood was estimated in green tons
using growth rates from several sources. Since it is difficult to
accurately estimate biomass production because of wide variability in
growth rates and wood quality, a range of values was provided in the
final report.
According to this analysis, the Mad River Valley
towns' "woodshed," or wood collection area, consists of 50,300 acres,
which is 68 percent of the forested lands and 55 percent of the total
study area. Nine percent of the suitable land is publicly owned. Several
models of growth were used to estimate a range of potential wood
harvest. Using a conservative growth rate of 1.2 green tons/acre/year
and assuming 38 percent of the wood biomass to be low quality (and thus
appropriate for heating or energy production rather than construction or
furniture), the Mad River Valley towns' woodshed was estimated to grow
approximately 23,000 green tons/year of low-quality wood. This
calculation suggests that the MRV towns are growing enough low-grade
wood each year to heat up to 94 percent of the permanent population's
homes at current rates of use (an average of 3.8 cords per household per
year).
According to researchers, locals lands are growing more
wood biomass than currently harvested. Analysis of multi-year
(2005-2008) harvest data for private lands enrolled in the Use Value
Appraisal (UVA) Program (also known as "Current Use") and all public
lands within the study areas was conducted to understand volumes and
location of wood currently being harvested. No information was available
on harvests from non-UVA enrolled private lands. Measuring current
harvest numbers was a challenge, due to reasons ranging from lack of
reporting incentives for landowners, conversion of wood quantities into
consistent units, descriptions of wood types, and even landowner
handwriting. The information gathered represents a partial snapshot of
the wood harvested by Valley landowners and thus may significantly
underestimate the volume of current harvests.
The overwhelming
majority of reported harvest volumes over this time period came from
private lands, with 94 percent from private UVA enrolled lands, roughly 3
percent each from state and federal lands, and none from town lands.
According
to the research, the average annual total harvest from the Washington
County towns of Warren, Waitsfield, Fayston and Moretown was 10,190
green tons/year (4,280 cords/year). The average annual harvest of
low-grade wood (cordwood and chips) from these towns was 3,838 green
tons/year (1,599 cords/year). According to these reported numbers, the
towns could potentially heat up to 16 percent of their households with
the existing average annual low-grade harvest volumes. (Note: These
figures do not consider current competing uses for low-grade wood.)
Subtracting the current home and institutional heating demands from the
conservative estimate of potentially available low-grade wood leaves at
most 64 percent of potential wood growth, or 6,150 cords/year leftover
for expanding consumption.
While the two studies noted above
supply information and insight into the potential supply and current
demand for wood biomass, these efforts to collect baseline information
on wood production and consumption suggest that existing data collection
or monitoring systems do not provide enough reliable information. The
range of estimated growth rates, lack of complete, reliable harvest data
at the community level, and invisibility of firewood from measured
systems are issues requiring further attention and suggesting caution as
pressure for wood consumption continues to increase.
Landowners
owning more than 25 acres in the MRV and 5TF were mailed surveys in an
effort to better understand their management decisions and motivations
related to wood harvesting. Responses were received from 88 MRV forest
landowners. About 25 percent of respondents harvested wood in 2008 or
2009. Half of the harvests had no forester involved and two-thirds of
the harvests were conducted by family members.
Respondents
harvested or removed trees more often to meet forest management goals
and to maintain tax status in "current use" (Use Value Appraisal
Program) rather than to meet a financial need or goal (Table 1).
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Management goals, value of the wood, and tax
reductions were the most important factors in deciding to harvest in the
future. However 28 percent also indicated that they would be more
likely to harvest wood if they had the opportunity to sell or donate to a
community-supported firewood program.
Wood supply depends not
only on the amount of biomass in the woods but also on the people who
harvest, transform and make it available to consumers. Major components
to the wood products supply chain in the project area included
landowners, stumpage owners, foresters, loggers and haulers, mills,
processors, and log brokers, and consumers big and small.
Wood
suppliers in the MRV region include three large mills and wood
processors. The three sawmills all had land holdings from which they
harvested regularly. Although outside the study area, several
concentration yards, log brokers, and smaller, regional mills also
served the area as important components of the supply chain.
Major
wood fuel consumers in the project area include Mt. Abraham Union High
School (Bristol), Harwood Union High School, and the kiln operations of
A. Johnson Company. Outside the study area, numerous other schools and
institutions, including Middlebury College, the Burlington Electric
Department McNeil Generating Plant, and the State Office Complex in
Waterbury, constitute other major wood fuel consumers in the region.
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The paper industry (Ticonderoga Mill in New York)
also competes for some of the same wood resources. The remainder of wood
fuel demand comes from small and residential scale consumers. A portion
of the locally harvested wood enters global and Canadian wood products
markets in log and other various processed forms, though this is
significantly less true of low-grade (fuel) wood.
Fifteen
loggers were interviewed to better understand perspectives on the
changing wood market as well as the opportunities and constraints of
their operations. The loggers interviewed were a diverse group of small
and mid-size operators. Many took jobs in both study areas and elsewhere
in the state. Most generally cut the trees, moved them to the landing
and participated in the sale of the wood to other parties, sometimes
with help from a forester. Some operators harvested under contract to a
mill. Few of the small logging operators interviewed had their own
capacity to transport logs, making their businesses dependent on
truckers and the trucking capacity of concentration yards.
While
firewood markets have been readily accessible to producers at almost any
scale, the growth of large fuel-grade chip markets, supported by
programs such as the Fuels for Schools Initiative, has been out of reach
for most small operators. The primary hurdles for loggers to
participate in the chip markets were large volume requirements, lack of
appropriate equipment (especially chippers and chip transport trucks),
very limited purchasing of log length wood for fuel chips, and the need
for on-demand delivery due to limited storage capacity at fuel user
sites. Wood chip fuel markets tended to favor those few operators who
are fully mechanized and capable of large volume production.
Despite
the apparent abundance of wood resources in Vermont's forests, the
loggers reported difficulty securing enough wood to meet energy demands
and cover business overhead costs. They observed that poor timber prices
encourage low supplies, since fuel wood is a side product of timber
harvests and thus directly affected by high-quality timber markets.
Respondents suggested that higher energy prices will be needed to make
fuel wood harvests viable on their own.
To better understand
residential wood energy use and personal values, household wood
consumers were provided surveys through local schools, grocery stores
and personal networks. One hundred-ninety-five valid responses were
received from the Mad River Valley.
Seventy-two percent of the
survey respondents reported acquiring cordwood in the last year. Most
households reported acquiring five cords or fewer. The average annual
consumption of firewood per household was 3.7 cords in the Mad River
Valley, and 2.6 tons of pellets. The number of households purchasing
wood was roughly equal to the number harvesting from their own property
(Table 2). Of those who acquired firewood but did not harvest their own,
55.6 percent did not know where the wood came from.
Household
respondents expressed a strong preference for wood products that could
meet sustainable environmental and social requirements (Table 3). About
half of the respondents were interested in community-supported firewood
opportunities that would ensure sustainably produced wood.
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Other major consumers included commercial
operations and institutional users. Major institutional consumers of
wood for heating include power plants in Burlington (180K tons/year) and
Ryegate (250K tons/year). Middlebury College's biomass plant, which
started running in 2009, is estimated to use 20K tons annually. At least
eight state facilities heat with wood and one hospital uses wood for
co-generation of heat and power.
Vermont's wood-heated schools
use about 20K tons annually. Harwood Union High School was identified
as a school where fuel supply could be reviewed as part of the project.
Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC) has been evaluating the school's
existing woody biomass fuel supply and will make recommendations about
developing wood fuel procurement strategies.
An additional
aspect of the project is to work with the community to develop measures
of sustainability to encourage the different people involved in the
management, use and procurement of biomass to begin speaking the same
language around wood harvest. Forest management and harvest have long
been guided by best management practices and forest certification
systems are everywhere at this point, but the harvest of wood biomass
for use as fuel presents unique challenges and opportunities.
The
University of Vermont's Center for Sustainable Agriculture and
Rubenstein School of Natural Resources, Vermont Family Forests (VFF) and
Northern Forest Alliance (NFA) have partnered in a three-year
collaborative research project to explore the sustainability of
community-based wood biomass production and use within communities of
the Mad River Valley (MRV) and the parts of Addison County. Additional
collaborators on the project include individuals from the Biomass Energy
Resources Center (BERC), the Forest Guild and Middlebury College.
The
final article in this series will highlight the issues revealed through
the project and address the question of where we go from here. For more
information about the project, including full reports, visit
www.mrvenergy.org or www.uvm.edu/forestcarbon/biomass.
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