Forest biomass offers Montana promise, pitfalls

The recent closure of Smurfit-Stone’s paper mill in Missoula has loggers and sawmill operators wondering who will buy their small logs, sawdust, chips and other residues — an important stream of revenue. These questions have prompted suggestions that creating a new market to burn these and other woody fuels for energy offers solutions to overgrown forests, high fossil fuel prices and a struggling wood products industry.

Done right, woody biomass can replace some coal and natural gas, provide new industry for rural communities, create good jobs, and contribute to a prosperous wood products industry. Most important, woody biomass energy can help us to engage in an ambitious campaign to address deteriorating forest conditions caused by past logging, 100 years of fire suppression, and the spread of housing into forestland.

Although biomass plants can burn wood wastes from sawmills, those wastes alone will not provide enough fuel. The majority of the fuels will come from small diameter trees originating from two sources. The first is hazardous fuel treatments designed to make communities safer from severe fire. The second is restoration harvests on overgrown, low-elevation forests suffering from past, high-grade logging and fire suppression. A Montana biomass energy market would, in some cases, help pay the costs of doing good restoration and community fire protection work.

JOE KERKVLIET

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