Is a Biomass Campus the Solution to Wildfire?
by Roy C. Anderson & John Kelley, The Beck Group Consulting
Service Spotlight: Biomass and Small Diameter Tree Utilization
Wildfire hasn't texted back and that is creating problems, but we have a solution.
Problem 1 and Problem 2
Throughout Western North America wildfire is a feared reality with increasingly deadly consequences. Even if it weren’t taking lives, please do not get us started on: firefighting costs, the destruction of building and property values, choking on smoke during fire season, and all the carbon that goes up in smoke during a large wildfire. More smoke stinging our eyes is that insurance companies are dramatically raising homeowners’ insurance premiums, or dropping coverage all together.
Wildfire is clearly Problem Number One. As we have seen, not even big wealthy cities are immune.
Thankfully, scientific research has shown that impacts from wildfire can be reduced by ridding forests of small diameter trees. Those small trees are a thick fuel source that quickly ladders a containable ground fire into the treetops, transforming it into an uncontrollable inferno. This brings us to Problem Number Two: the economic reality check. Thinning small diameter trees is a costly operation. There are many stems per acre and each piece is small. Those truths translate into low productivity and high costs for the logging contractors saddled with the job of thinning forests jammed with small diameter trees.
A Possible Solution and Problem 3
For all you champions of small entrepreneurship, there’s a potential positive: If nearby businesses exist that can convert small diameter trees into saleable products, the wildfire mitigation treatments may pay for themselves. That’s because our friend the logging contractor can sell the trees to those businesses and earn a profit. Or at the very least, lower costs by the amount of the offsetting revenue.
The idea of selling small diameter trees as a way to maximize wildfire mitigation introduces Problem Number Three: It isn’t cost-effective, or in some cases possible, to make high-value products such as lumber and plywood from small diameter trees. We don’t see that changing.
For many decades, the answer to this problem was converting small trees into chips for making paper. That still happens in many areas, but North America paper consumption and manufacture have been on a steady downward trend. Some rather populous states with plentiful forests (California and Colorado are examples) have not one single paper mill. Due to the declining demand, in the US West most of the wood chips needed for papermaking are now supplied via chips made from sawmilling by-products.
If no one wants the scraps, what next?
Due to the supply and demand situation as described, to a large extent the only remaining options for small tree utilization are a ragtag assortment of manufacturing technologies. Some are established and some are emerging. For well over a decade, the team at The Beck Group has been studying the feasibility of those manufacturing technologies. Now that we’ve come to know them well, we’ve concluded that a biomass campus is the key to the small diameter kingdom.
What Is a Biomass Campus?
A biomass campus is a group of complementary forest products manufacturing operations at a single location. They all operate independently, but when well designed, the combination of businesses allows for utilizing the full range of species, sizes, and quality levels of the small diameter raw material delivered to the site. Indigenous peoples rarely waste any part of what they harvest, and that timeless wisdom can apply to forest products biomass campus in our modern day.
Why Does a Biomass Campus Make Sense?
Many of the technologies and businesses that convert small trees into products are small in scale. That’s a feasibility disadvantage because fixed costs such as managers’ salaries, depreciation, insurance, property taxes, etc. can only be spread across a limited production volume. However, if several small-scale businesses at a single site share resources and staff, their combined operations can create an economy of scale that is essential for profitable forest products manufacturing.
For example, a truck scale is needed to measure raw material volume. At a small operation the scale may only be used a couple of times a day. But when there are multiple businesses, the truck scale and rolling stock (like forklifts and loaders) are more fully utilized. Similarly, workers can be shifted to different parts of the operation as needed so that their labor is fully utilized.
Another advantage is that facilities processing tree stems into marketable products will necessarily produce some by-products (chips, bark, sawdust, shavings, etc.). Those by-products represent a potential secondary business. They can be burned to heat a kiln or buildings, or to produce power that is sold to the grid. The by-products can even be made into products like biochar, pellets, bedding, bark for landscaping, etc.
Even better, the cost of gathering raw materials for those secondary businesses doesn’t entail a special trip because they have already been accumulated at the campus. A well-designed biomass campus can be thought of as an ecosystem where each component plays an important role in ensuring the vitality of the whole.
If that isn’t enough, government cannot be discounted as a potential partner. History shows that local, Tribal, State, and Federal stakeholders benefit from having nearby timber consumers willing to work with them. We don’t see a viable alternative unless government wants to start its own biomass campuses, or sells off all its timberland.
How Can The Beck Group Help?
We’ve noticed that small communities are increasingly considering ways to control their own safety. If they wait for the various levels of government to resolve the problem for them, that aid could come too late. They’re also universally interested in economic development for their rural communities, in which even five new jobs might make a difference. Surrounded by trees, they start planning forest products businesses. Most logical thing in the world—but there’s a key decision to make, and getting it wrong could be very costly.
We have a very soft spot for those community groups. As employees and co-owners of our own small business, Beck Group consulting specialists come from and have lived in small towns. As rural West alumni, we get it; we too value self-reliance. We want to see those communities succeed and thrive for many reasons, including the fact that their resilience is inspirational.
Even the most determined community groups don’t know all the possibilities for utilizing the small trees, or how to assess the feasibility of those businesses. If there are fifteen imaginable possibilities, how can people filter out those that can’t work? Even some experienced timber producers might not have the industry breadth to determine the most efficient combination of industries for their own locality, source material mix, and best economic outcome.
That’s Where We Come in
At one time in living memory, the US West was dotted with mills of varying types and sizes. We believe that the biomass campus concept offers the rural West one of its most exciting options for returning to that ethos and along the way enjoying better fire safety, local economic growth in underserved areas, and creating useful forest products through judicious, sustainable management.
We at The Beck Group do this every day, tailoring our analysis to the local situation and considering every utilization option to winnow the list down to those we judge as best suited for a biomass campus. We also help identify an entrepreneur who is willing to convert the business concept into a reality. In many cases, we find that the presence of that entrepreneur is a key missing ingredient.
To explore the possibilities, email us at info@beckgroupconsulting.com or just call the office at (503) 684-3406. Real people will respond, and we’ll direct you to the most appropriate staff member to help guide your process. Let’s talk!
The Beck Group, Inc.
Forest Products Planning and Consulting Services
Telephone (503) 684-3406
Email: info@beckgroupconsulting.com