Inside this issue

From the Editors

Building Demand Boosting Utilization

The news that Strategic Biofuels in Louisiana is working with the Forest Service and other groups on biomass standards is big. Developing a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) system to make it easier to incorporate forestry feedstock into biomass and green energy initiatives and projects by ensuring raw materials meet sustainability standards is going to make utilization of woody biomass more attractive—and that’s good for the wood bioenergy industry.

Having such a system is yet another tool to aid in the increased utilization of wood as a sustainable energy source. Strategic Biofuels is taking the lead in developing an auditable system to track feedstock qualification, source-origin and chain of custody data to support its Louisiana Green Fuels project that will use woody biomass to produce renewable diesel and naphtha.

While the Louisiana facility is expected to break new ground with a negative carbon footprint and also incorporate well-based carbon sequestration technology, the use of woody biomass as a biofuel feedstock is an encouraging sign.

The EPA is required under the Clean Air Act to set RFS volume requirements each year. There are four renewable fuel standards—conventional renewable fuel, advanced biofuel, cellulosic biofuel, and biomass-based diesel.

Traditionally, biofuel has been the province of big agriculture: “Conventional renewable fuel” is mostly corn ethanol; “advanced biofuel” uses mostly non-food crop ag residues and industrial waste as feedstock; “cellulosic biofuel” uses mostly corn stover and similar products; and “biomass-based diesel” has seen soybean oil as its biggest feedstock.

From Left: Jessica Johnson, Managing Editor; Dan Shell, Senior Editor; Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief; David Abbott, Senior Associate Editor

Julie Tucker, National Wood Innovations Program Manager of Bioenergy, Biofuels, and Bioproducts, U.S. Forest Service, notes that “Historically, forest residuals have been a disposal challenge. The Renewable Fuel Standard helps change that by giving the renewable energy sector a financial incentive to convert these unwanted forest residuals to high value biofuels and renewable electricity.”

Tucker adds that EPA must ensure that forest residuals receiving credit under the RFS are qualifying feedstock: “We also want them to be sustainably sourced. This initiative with Strategic Biofuels is an exciting opportunity to do that.”

With large amounts of forest residue volumes available in timber-rich regions of the U.S., it’s important to see timber-based biomass standards set and met. This is especially true in areas where forest health issues and projects create large amounts of biomass available for utilization.

While the development group is being led by the Forest Service and Strategic Biofuels and the full team is still being assembled, members will include representatives from the National Assn. of State Foresters and the American Loggers Council as well as groups representing industrial and non-industrial landowners, tribal interests and others.

It’s critical to have a wide range of stakeholders involved, including wood bioenergy interests, to help develop such a system that has national implications for increased biomass utilization—and help ensure the wood bioenergy industry’s concerns are heard as biomass standards and tracking systems are established.

Graanul Invest Enters The U.S. Game With Woodville Pellets

Article by Jessica Johnson, Managing Editor, Wood Bioenergy

WOODVILLE, Texas – Plagued by never-ending drama—from financing to fire—the former Texas Pellets facility here and its nearby port facility never saw the consistency that many other industrial wood pellet operations in the pine-rich U.S. South have experienced over the last decade. Instead, it battled engineering issues, machinery issues, staffing concerns and then finally a bankruptcy. When Baltics-based Graanul Invest, one of the world’s largest and most reliable wood pellet producers, purchased the mothballed six-year-old plant at auction in 2019, to be blunt, the facility was a mess. But it had untapped potential. But first, some of the lingering legal messes had to be cleared by the administration. Then the familiar song of COVID-related delays killed some of the company’s timelines for re-start. But, as they say, the past is the past and the future, well, the future for Woodville Pellets, as the operation is now called, is bright.