If Wisconsin would take advantage of “low hanging fruit” and cash in on the state’s biomass potential via small-scale distributed energy systems, advantages would reach both the agricultural sector and rural communities, according to a recently released Program on Agricultural Technologies (PATS) policy perspective.“For me, the thing that struck home was that all of these logistics behind biomass are so dependent on location,” Turnquist said of his research. The small-scale distributed energy option is obvious, he said, creating a marriage between the idea of hundreds of thousands of producers and smaller-scale uses.
Wisconsin has almost 15 million tons of potential biomass, the paper states, and if smaller local operations use that feedstock, it could increase energy production opportunities and increase returns for rural communities. It’s not just the scale of biomass potential that makes distributed energy a powerful tool in Wisconsin, but also its diversity, Turnquist said. “The single biggest benefit is that we have the capacity to do it right now,” he said.
Small-scale operations are starting to pop up around the state, according to Radloff, mostly at rural schools. Starting small and building out might be a way to build the biomass-to-energy infrastructure in the state, he added. Some larger projects also are in the works such as Governor Jim Doyle’s order for four university campuses in the state to “come off the grid” and switch to biomass, Radloff said. If more energy is produced locally and used locally, it can complement other renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, Radloff said. The two researchers compare local energy production to something most Wisconsinites can relate to, a local farmer’s market; the money locals spend goes to other locals they might know personally.
Opportunities also exist for small-scale projects to partner with larger-scale operations, according to the authors. They cite as an example Xcel Energy’s 2008 proposal to add a biomass-to-energy burner to their existing plant in Ashland, which already uses woody biomass.
The amount of biomass that can be produced and harvested in Wisconsin still is an open question, the paper states, along with how much the communities actually will benefit from bioenergy and other renewables. But, it adds, local energy production is an important part of the state’s economic future and policies should be crafted to ensure the economic and energy returns go to rural Wisconsin residents and that groups undertaking distributed energy projects can manage the risk in the bioenergy market.
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