Transcript Document 7797898

It’s Not Easy Building Green
Vermont Community Development Association
Winter Meeting
OVERVIEW OF WOOD-FIRED DISTRICT HEATING
Vermont Technical College
Randolph, Vermont
March 18, 2008
Tim Maker, Senior Program Director
Biomass Energy Resource Center
Biomass Energy
Resource Center (BERC)
BERC is a national not-for-profit organization working to
promote responsible use of biomass for energy.
BERC’s mission is to achieve a healthier environment,
strengthen local economies, and increase energy security
across the United States by developing sustainable biomass
systems at the community level.
Imagine your community’s
downtown center.
Imagine what it would be like to:
• Get off oil.
• To use a heating fuel that comes from your county.
• Keep all heating fuel dollars in the local economy.
• Become a renewably heated community.
• Know that building heat would be affordable no
matter what happened in the world.
This presentation and the ones that
follow are about realizing this vision.
First, let’s look at the future of oil availability
and oil cost.
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19
95
19
90
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85
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80
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75
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70
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65
19
60
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55
19
50
19
45
Crude Oil Annual Production, Billion Barrels
Crude Oil Production in the US
Peak Production in 1970
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
World Oil Production History & Forecast:
One Scenario
Peak in 2030
Billion Barrels per Year
60
USGS Estimates of Ultimate Recovery
50
40
30
20
History
Forecast
10
0
1900
1925
1950
1975
2000
2025
2050
Note: US volumes were added to the USGS foreign volumes to
obtain world totals.
Source: US DOE, Energy Information Administration
2075
2100
After the World Oil Peak – What
Happens to Communities in Rural
Areas?
• Very high, rapidly increasing oil and gas costs
• Competitive disadvantage
• Economic un-development
• Dependence on an unfriendly global economy
High oil prices and reduced oil
availability will have a big impact on
Vermont’s communities.
• Transportation
• Community planning
• Downtown development
• Vibrant, resilient, secure communities
Local Energy:
A new paradigm for the relationship
between communities and forests
What Are the Characteristics of
Local Energy?
• Uses community-scale technology
• Replaces fossil fuels with local biomass*, for heat
and power
• Uses efficient, clean technology
• Has strict requirement for sustainable fuels
* In Vermont, biomass fuel means low-grade wood.
What Are the Benefits of Local
Energy?
• Keeps local energy dollars circulating in the community
• Displaces expensive fossil fuels and increases security
• Scaled to link community energy economy with local
resources
• Acts as a force for sustainable forestry
• Uses available fuel, woodchips or pellets, at high efficiency
• Uses manageable volumes of biomass for each project
• Supports forest-products industry and creates jobs
Comparative Cost of Heat Various Fuels
Fuel
Unit
Cost/unit
Average
Efficiency
$/MMBtu
Delivered
Heating Oil
gallons
$3.00
80%
$27.17
Propane
gallons
$2.50
85%
$31.97
Natural Gas
MMBtu
$12
85%
$14.12
Woodchips
tons
$50
70%
$7.09
Wood Pellets
tons
$220
80%
$17.23
Compares individual building fossil fuel heating to
biomass (wood) district heating
What Does Local Energy Look Like?
• School woodchip and pellet heating
• Other institutional heating
• Wood-fired campus energy systems
• Community district energy
(using wood fuel)
• Small-scale power generation and CHP
Community District Heating
Wood-fired central heating plant, with buried
hot water piping to individual buildings
District Heat Infrastructure
District heat pipes being
laid in shallow trench
District Heating in Europe
• In Denmark, 60% of residences (1.5 million homes)
are heated through district systems.
• In Finland, 50% of all space heating comes from
district heating; over 90% of all apartments, public and
commercial buildings are connected to district heat.
• Belgrade has 300 miles of district heat piping serving
180 million square feet of building space.
(In the US only 3% of space heating is
done with district heat systems.)
District Heating in Europe
District heat share of single-family houses:
• Iceland
85%
(geothermal)
• Denmark
47%
(16% biomass)
• Austria
13%
(21% biomass)
• Finland
12%
(18% biomass)
• Sweden
11%
(42% biomass)
Source: http://www.euroheat.org/ecoheatcool/documents/Ecoheatcool%20WP4%20Web.pdf
District Heating in Europe
• 5,000 community district heating systems in Europe
• 78% of district heat sources are non-fossil
• Biomass (wood residues) is the biggest fuel source
• Other heat sources also used: industrial waste heat,
heat from CHP, geothermal, waste incineration
In Vermont we don’t have these other
heat sources, but what we do have lot
of is BIOMASS.
Biomass Community District Energy
Urban
Setting
District Energy St. Paul
Biomass Community District Energy
Small
Community
Setting
Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
Biomass Community District Energy
Small-
Scale
Setting
Green Acres Family Housing
Barre, Vermont
Biomass Community District Energy
Cordwood boiler system
Cobb Hill Co-Housing
Hartland Four Corners, Vermont
Creating New from Old
Wood-fired District Heating
Montpelier State Complex
District Heating System
New District/Campus Wood Energy
Crotched Mountain Rehab Center
Greenfield, New Hampshire
Wood Fuel Sources for District Energy
Fuel Transport and Delivery
Biomass District Energy
Development Issues
How do we build a new kind of municipal
infrastructure?
• It’s not a technology issue.
• It’s a money issue.
Biomass District Energy
Development Issues
Where could the capital come from?
• Federal $
• State $
• Municipal bonds
• Private capital
• Fuel cost savings (ESCOs, a new NESCO?)
Conclusion
Using our abundant wood residues to replace fossil
fuels to heat downtowns using district energy
systems makes sense in many ways.
The challenge is how to organize and finance this
new form of municipal infrastructure.
Contact
Information
Timothy Maker
Senior Program Director
Biomass Energy Resource Center
43 State Street
Montpelier, VT 05601
802-223-7770 X 123
[email protected]
www.biomasscenter.org