The coal burning boiler in the Virginia municipal utility building. Under the Laurentian Energy Project proposal, this boiler would be phased out as new wood fired boilers are brought on line. (MPR Photo/Bob Kelleher)

The public gets a look at a plan to generate electrical power from wood this week. Municipal Utilities in Hibbing and Virginia are planning to convert two old coal fired power plants. They say the project will be good for the Iron Range economy and good for the environment. But others say there are still environmental costs to harvesting and burning wood.
They call the venture the Laurentian Energy Project. The electrical power would generate cash for the two communities. And the wood needed could create new jobs in both logging and tree farming, news.minnesota.publicradio.com reported.
All this while helping improve the environment by not burning coal--considered a dirty and non-renewable fuel. Proponents say it’s a big step forward. Clyde Hanson says it’s a big step backwards.
“This is just going back to the 1600s,“ says Hanson. “This is totally the wrong direction.“
Hanson monitors timber issues for the Northstar Chapter of the Sierra Club. Hanson says there are cleaner ways to generate electricity than burning wood. And he says the region’s forests can’t support a wood-based power industry.
“If we try to solve our energy problems by burning wood, we’ll end up denuded of forests like the east coast of the US was even in the 1600s,“ says Hanson. “So we don’t want to go back there again. We have better solutions. We’ve got wind power. We’ve got solar power. We’ve got conservation. We’ve got much better solutions now. We should be going that direction instead of going backwards.“
Proponents say the power plants will rely largely on fast maturing hybrid popal trees, to be planted on former farm land. Otherwise, they’ll burn a combination of thinned and undesirable species; tree tops and branches; currently going to waste in the woods. It’s the stuff now left behind when a site is logged. But Hanson says even that stuff has value in nature.
“Well, that’s a misnomer that there’s wood going to waste in our forests,“ Hanson says. “Wood has a function in (an)ecosystem. It provides habitat and soil nutrients. And if we take it away and burn it we’re degrading our forests, harming wildlife, and reducing our wild heritage.“
The project commissioned reports on wood availability, wildlife, and soil nutrients, according to Terry Leoni, who heads the Virginia Municipal Utilities. He says there’s some 730,000 tons of wood residue available each year within 100 miles of the two cities.
“So if you look at that study, and you look at what we’ll be using, we are only using about one sixth of the available resource within a one hundred mile radius of our two plants,“ Leoni says.
Another report, he says, shows the project will not cause any measurable depletion of nutrients from forest soils.
Michael Noble heads the group Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy, or ME3. Noble says forestry practices and waste wood management issues will need to be monitored. But he says they look manageable.
“I’ve been privy to conversations between the developers and a lot of the forest advocates,“ Noble says. “And I’m not saying every single person that’s concerned about forestry issues has signed off on this project, but I tell you that there is in general, a lot of good will about what Hibbing and Virginia is proposing.“
More importantly, he says, the conversion will reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the two plants. That’s the greenhouse gas often blamed for heating up the earth’s atmosphere. He says the conversion essentially eliminates carbon dioxide emissions.
“Because the amount of CO2 produced when you burn wood is exactly identical to the CO2 that’s absorbed from the atmosphere while the plants are growing,“ Noble says. “So, biomass energy is regarded as a global warming friendly fuel. So that’s actually one of the big, big, environmental plusses here, is the elimination of one of the greenhouse gasses that are changing the climate.“
And, Noble likes the idea that the wood will produce steam heat and hot water for businesses and homes in Hibbing and Virginia. So called district energy, is considered more efficient than individual buildings with individual furnaces.

Norway believes its “zero emissions“ policy for oil and gas activity in the Arctic should be adopted internationally, the country’s oil minister said on Wednesday before a visit to neighboring Russia.
Norway and Russia share a sea boundary in the Arctic Barents Sea, which is believed to contain vast petroleum resources. Energy firms are increasingly turning their gaze north to the Barents as North Sea oil becomes depleted.
Norway requires drilling in its part of the Barents to have “zero emissions“ of oil, drilling fluids or chemicals. But environmental groups have said leaks this year by a Norwegian drilling rig show that industry cannot meet the demands.
“We have the world’s strictest emissions policy with zero tolerance,“ Oil and Energy Minister Thorhild Widvey told a briefing for foreign journalists. “Exploration has to be in line with environmental and fisheries’ interests.“
“I think it should be a goal for all countries that want to take part (in developing the Arctic) to have a zero emissions policy,“ Widvey said, according to yahoo.com.
But she added: “I can’t set demands for other countries. I can only set demands off Norway.“
Widvey will visit Moscow on May 16-18 and meet Russian officials including the energy and natural resource ministers. She said she would use the visit to “put in a good word for Norwegian oil companies and the supply industry.“
Norway is the world’s third biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia and western Europe’s largest natural gas producer. Norwegian oil firms Statoil and Norsk Hydro are looking to Russia’s Arctic for opportunities.
“Off Norway, we’ve produced a third of our oil and gas so far, a third has been found and a third not yet found,“ Widvey said. A third of the amount not found is thought to be in the Barents, or 7.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
“The problem is to find it and to develop it in a profitable way,“ she said.

Energy for Rising Demand
According to some official estimates, a quarter of the world’s remaining petroleum resources may lie in the Arctic.
“If we’re going to manage to meet rising energy demand, I think that eyes are turning northwards. The Americans, the Russians and the Europeans are looking north,“ Widvey said.
“I can’t rule out that the Barents will be Europe’s main petroleum province in future,“ she said.
Norwegian oil companies resumed exploration in the Barents Sea this year after the government ended a ban that halted drilling in 2001 pending an environmental impact study.
So far, Statoil’s Snoehvit gas field, due on stream by late 2006, is the only development in the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea that has been deemed commercially viable and reached the building phase.
Statoil is drilling its first Barents well since the ban ended. It resumed the work this month after a leak of 1.6 cubic meters of hydraulic oil from the Eirik Raude rig in April halted it and provoked an outcry from environmentalists.
Smaller rival Norsk Hydro drilled a well in the Barents earlier this year, but found only traces of oil, not producible amounts.
Both companies are also vying with western oil majors to participate in Russia’s huge Shtokman gas field.

To contend with record energy prices, Strategic Energy is to equip energy managers with greater control over electricity purchases.
The objective of the new PowerPortfolio product provided by Strategic Energy, a leading supplier of retail electricity in competitive markets, is to give large energy users greater control over escalating electricity costs.
PowerPortfolio enables customers to choose a combination of fixed and market-based prices to lower costs, reduce market exposure and capitalize on market downturns to lock in portions of their load. Unlike competing ’block and index’ offerings that dictate a pre-determined set of fixed and market-based prices up front for the entire contract, PowerPortfolio apparently allows customers to actively fix or float energy prices in real-time at any point throughout the contract term with the help of an assigned Portfolio Strategist.
To make informed decisions, customers also receive regular market updates and customized activity reports on their portfolio position, eyeforenergy.com said.
“PowerPortfolio gives very large energy users a powerful new tool to employ when market conditions demand a more active energy management approach,“ says Michael Young, Senior Vice President of Sales at Strategic Energy. “With electricity prices eclipsing historical highs, energy managers rely on Strategic Energy to provide experienced, objective information they can use to make timely decisions.“
As key states across the country move closer to providing open, fully deregulated energy markets, customers are now better positioned to make informed purchasing decisions based on real pricing signals in the wholesale market.
“With many transition periods set to expire over the next few years, large customers are partnering with competitive suppliers like Strategic Energy to tap into the wholesale electricity market through customized products and services,“ states John Dietrich, Director of Marketing. “With so many factors impacting the price of electricity, large customers must have access to timely information so they can effectively manage their bottom line.“
PowerPortfolio is now available to customers in California, Texas, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts with an aggregate demand of five megawatts or greater, with additional states expected to come online later this year. Strategic Energy is already serving customers in the industrial, commercial real estate, big-box retail and quick-service restaurant segments.
For a management fee, Strategic Energy buys wholesale power for direct delivery to retail customers. The company operates in ten states with retail choice, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

The Sea Snail is designed to capture ocean energy from locations where fixed structures would be too difficult to install and operate.

The Robert Gordon University’s ocean energy device, the “Sea Snail“, was successfully installed in Burra Sound, Orkney. The Snail, which was designed as a support system for tidal current energy devices, was towed out from Stromness Harbor earlier this month.
The Project leader, Alan Owen, reported that the device was securely sited on the sea bed at 6:30pm, exactly on schedule.
The Snail, through its use of reversible hydrofoils to produce down force, is intended to tackle what many believe to be the biggest technical obstacle to the economic development of tidal current power: the difficulty of attaching energy extraction devices in energetic flows, where the sea bed does not allow conventional anchorage, solaraccess.com reported.
“Alan has made a huge breakthrough for the economic development of tidal current power,“ said Professor Ian Bryden, who originally conceived of the Snail concept. “Use of the Snail will allow the development of small energetic sites, which would not have been accessible to more conventional fixing concepts.“
Tidal currents offer a substantial and predictable source of renewable energy. The Scottish resource alone, if developed effectively, could provide enough electricity to support a population of 15 million.
At present the potential to use tidal energy is limited by installation methods for turbines, which require firm attachment to the seabed. This is very expensive and, at present, requires turbines to be placed in water depths greater than 25 m and less than 50 m.
The full size SNAIL is a prefabricated tidal device that can be cheaply installed in shallow and deep water. This will significantly increase the number of suitable sites for turbines and reduce installation costs.
In addition, the potential export market for prefabricated tidal current devices which can be installed without specialist hardware, is considerable. Given the potential of the technology to the Scottish economy, the project has received GBP 158,000 (USD 300,000) from Scottish Enterprise’s Proof of Concept Fund.

Britain may need one more generation of nuclear power stations in the fight against climate change, Sir David King, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, says.
Sir David, who has sounded the alarm about global warming more loudly than anyone else in recent years, believes that new nuclear plants may be needed to keep Britain’s faltering plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on course.
His comments, in an interview with The Independent, come three weeks after this newspaper reported that Tony Blair was drawing up plans to revive the nuclear option as a key element in the Government’s drive to combat global warming.
They are the clearest on-the-record indications yet of high-level thinking about what will be an immensely controversial decision, likely to split the Cabinet, enrage the green movement and deeply concern many of the public, frightened about nuclear waste, nuclear accidents and potential nuclear terrorism.
Sir David, who said last year that the threat of climate change was worse than the terrorism risk, and publicly castigated the Bush administration in the United States for not signing the Kyoto climate treaty, does not see an unlimited nuclear future for Britain, emptywells.com reported.
In years to come, he believes, renewable energy systems such as wind, wave and solar power, together with increased energy efficiency and the possible development of fusion power, will be sufficient to cut back the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from conventional coal and gas-fired power stations, which are believed to be raising temperatures around the globe. In the short term, he thinks, there may be no alternative to building new nuclear facilities--“one generation only“, he stresses--if Britain is not to miss badly its more demanding global warming targets.
The reason is what he refers to as the “energy gap“ - the period coming soon when Britain’s existing range of atomic power stations, which provide us with nearly a quarter of our electricity without producing any significant amounts of CO2, start to be retired and drop out of the energy mix. Unless they are replaced, Sir David believes, the Government may not be able to meet its target of providing 20 per cent of our electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2020.
To its considerable embarrassment, the Government has already admitted that it will miss, by a wide margin, its target of cutting CO2 emissions by a fifth by 2010. It has been further embarrassed by an increase in emissions in each of the past two years.
In the interview, Sir David, one of Tony Blair’s most trusted advisers, said the energy gap was imminent and was the key issue. In a long discussion of the nuclear question, he said he well understood the fears of many of the public about nuclear waste, nuclear accidents and the possibilities of terrorists acquiring nuclear material. He said: “I’ve never been a great nuclear protagonist, because of concerns of waste and leakage, the cost of disposal, the decommissioning issue and the whole question of public acceptability.“ But he said the question of climate change and its impacts on human society-- “the most serious problem we’re faced with globally this century“--was so important that the nuclear option had to be re-examined, and that public perception of nuclear’s dangers did not necessarily accord with reality.
He said fewer people had been killed in nuclear power generation than in other forms of energy production, and that modern nuclear stations being designed were inherently much safer than those involved in the notorious accidents at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.
Furthermore, he indicated that if new nuclear power stations were built in Britain, they would be sited near existing nuclear sites, and it would be highly unlikely that fresh “greenfield“ sites would be chosen.
The decision to go nuclear would not mean large amounts of Government money being spent he said, merely opening the option to the private sector. But it would be necessary to look at the fiscal regime very carefully, so that nuclear, with its high fixed costs, did not lose out in a competitive energy market.
Sir David stressed that going nuclear once more would not mean that Britain’s commitment to the renewable energy systems of wind, wave and solar power would be in any way weakened. But the energy gap was a key issue, he said, as it was imminent.