Smallwood Utilization Network
SCHOOL LESSONS: ADVICE FROM THE FOREST SERVICE MANAGER WHO BROUGHT BIOMASS HEATING TO WESTERN INSTITUTIONS
Dave Atkins works with schools and local support businesses in Fuels for Schools
Dave Atkins is a low-key guy with a high-energy job. Since 2001, he’s served as the Fuels for Schools Program Manager for the Forest Service’s Northern and Intermountain Region.
Together with Forest Service co-workers, RC&Ds, and a team of state coordinators, Dave has helped almost two dozen Western schools convert their heating systems in order to use slash from nearby forests.
These days Dave is busier than ever, but he recently took time to discuss some of the hard-won lessons he’s learned along the way. He thinks his insights could be valuable to both RC&Ds and conservation districts, both of which he considers to be valuable partners in launching the program into its next and final phase.
A HISTORY REVIEW
The Fuels for School program was started 20 years ago in New England to answer two questions: What to do with the residue from forest thinning and agriculture? And how to help financially-strapped schools with their heating bills? The solution was to use some of that biomass to heat the schools, after first converting, or “retrofitting” their fuel or gas heating systems.
The idea was a success, and since 2001, Dave has been directing a three-phase program to transplant it to towns near the forested parts of Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
The first and most heavily funded phase required setting up demonstration projects, the very first of which went online in 2003. Every year since then the Darby, Montana School District has been saving $100,000 on its heating bills.
In the second phase, grants have covered 50% of costs (as opposed to 80% in the first phase) and schools are required to enter competitive applications. This phase is helping to retrofit more than a dozen schools from Kalispell, Montana, to Kellogg, Idaho, and retrofits are also being started or planned for a college, a landfill, a prison, and a medical center.
The program is gaining momentum and is now heading into its third, or “commercialization” phase, in which the Forest Service will continue to lend expertise, but will provide only five percent of the funding.
“Fuels for Schools in the West is is shifting from a public to a private focus,” says Dave. “And I think that’s just the kind of environment that CDs and RC&Ds work best in.” So what lessons does he want to share? He’s boiled them down to three.
LESSON ONE: EDUCATE THE SCHOOL BOARD.
Burning wood is always dirty, right? Wrong. “That’s a common misperception,” Dave says, “and I’ve learned to nip it in the bud when I present to school boards.”
He begins the re-education process by joking, “This is not your father’s wood stove.” He explains that high-tech wood-burning systems are much cleaner than coal, and by some criteria are cleaner than fuel oil and propane.
Dave and his associates have accumulated a vast database of emissions-related information. Now they can show that, pound for pound of burned wood, modern boilers release a tiny fraction of the pollutants from slash pile fires.
Dave concedes that compared to natural gas, boilers release slightly higher levels of some pollutants, including carbon dioxide. But he counters that if new trees replace the wood burned in boilers, they’ll breath in as much CO2 as was released, and there’ll be no net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, pump “sequestered” carbon into the air and leave it there.
However the clincher for school boards is cost. Dave has developed a series of PowerPoint slides that compare the cost per million BTUs for various energy sources: Fuel oil, $18.00; propane, $16.25; natural gas, $10.50; pellets, $8.00; and wood chips in boilers, a mere $3.75.
But what about all the operators you need? Another non-issue, according to Dave. Licensed operators are required for high-pressure steam systems, but the Fuels for Schools systems run on low-pressure steam or hot water. They don’t even require on-site maintenance: Today’s computer-controlled, online systems can be monitored by any authorized person with a web browser.
LESSON TWO: BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH ARCHITECTS.
Most school construction starts with a call to the architect, who isn’t
necessarily aware of biomass. “That’s why I had to learn how to get it onto their radar screens,” says Dave. He made a point of visiting firms like Montana’s CTA, which has since become an advocate for wood heat. (CTA’s Nick Salmon recently made a presentation on biomass heat to the Montana chapter of the American Institute of Architects.)
In his soft-spoken way, Dave plans to continue to bend the ears of architects, engineers, and designers. For instance, at a September 2007 biomass workshop in Missoula, he’ll conduct a session geared directly to architects. And he’s laying the groundwork to be able to provide content for Architecture 2030, a section of the AIA website that addresses the role of architects in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Early on, Dave learned an even more important lesson about architects and engineers: Use their time well. “When we started,” he says with a pained expression, “we’d pay to have engineers visit the site and assess it suitability. Often, we were spending thousands just to find out that it wasn’t going to work.”
These days the program starts with a survey that applicants can download from FuelsForSchools.com. Dave explains, “In 20 minutes, we can evaluate it and give them a go/no go decision.” If it’s a go, engineers visit the site, and then Dave presents the client with the estimated cost of conversion and the “payback” period in years. If the client says yes, a state coordinator starts on the nuts and bolts of lining up funds.
LESSON THREE: GET THE SYSTEM UP TO SIZE.
Burning biomass requires more than a janitor running a boiler. “You’ve got the guy who gathers and chips and delivers the slash. And the guys who can build that specialized facility, and maintain it. And if it’s going to be a market-driven business, you add people who know how to finance and perhaps market the operation.”
In other words it’s an interconnected system that needs to be big enough to support everyone involved. Dave illustrates this point with his own Tale of Two Cities. “Our demo site in Darby was a technical success,” he explains. “But they were only using 700 tons a year, and we realized that’s not enough for a wood chip supplier to live on.” (It happens that, unlike many other parts of the West, the area has other buyers to help sustain Darby’s wood chip contractor.)
Dave figures a supplier needs to be selling at least 10,000 tons of chips a year. “That’s the threshold tonnage that makes for a viable business,” he points out. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Chadron, Nebraska, where a three-man business supplies chipped slash for the wood-burning boilers at Chadron State College. The college buys 8,000 tons, but the supplier sells another 2,000 tons to nurseries and farmers.
While Chadron is not in Dave’s territory, it holds a lesson for him: Size matters. “To borrow a phrase from mall developers, I’d advise CDs to try to find an ‘anchor tenant,’ that is, a big 10,000 ton-or-more facility that would encourage other players to jump in.” He’s hoping that this magnet effect works at one of his newest projects: a 12,000 ton-a-year retrofit for a corrections facility in Carson City, Nevada.
Dave adds that another way to achieve critical mass is to develop multiple facilities, preferably all within a radius of 50 miles or less. And it doesn’t hurt for a chip market to be diversified, with other kinds of buyers such as pellet mills, composting operations, and co-generation plants.
It all comes down to infrastructure. “From forest landowners to processors to operators to school administrators, it’s like a network,” Dave notes. “Its value grows exponentially with each new connection you make—each new person or business.”
PASSING THE TORCH TO CDs and RC&Ds
According to Fred Deneke, the NACD Forestry Programs Coordinator, “The Forest Service and the Department of Interior are now discussing a possible project that would allow the NACD to take the Fuels for Schools message to Conservation Districts and RC&Ds.”
That’s good news for Dave Atkins, who thinks CDs and RC&Ds possess just the expertise and contacts needed to carry his program into its final, market-driven phase. “We’re still spreading the news,” says Dave. “And the joint agreement would most likely fund a contractor who would advocate for the program at meetings.”
Speaking of meetings, Dave will be giving a presentation on Fuels for Schools at the upcoming NACD meeting in Los Angeles on February 7th, 2007.
He’s also helping to organize a 3-day workshop in Missoula for the transfer of biomass technology to RC&D and CD managers. The workshop begins September 7th, 2007 and includes hands-on, practical programs: field trips to visit a new company with an innovative system of slash gathering; a panel for operations and maintenance people; a how-to lecture from the plant manager at the University of Idaho; and seminars for architects and engineers.
Dave admits his agenda is ambitious. So what keeps him going? “For one thing, just knowing that we’re part of something historic—a paradigm shift from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels.”
And maybe that’s the secret of his success. Because for Dave Atkins, turning smoky slash piles into heat for school kids is not just a goal. It’s a burning desire.
This and other articles can be found on Forestry Notes:
http://forestry.nacdnet.org/forestrynotes/
More information about Fuels for Schools can be found on:
http://www.fuelsforschools.org/
Contact SUN: 406-529-3353