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Southern Oregon Hopes To Lead Northwest U.S. In Campus Biomass

Jes Burns
/
Earthfix

As universities around the country try to meet carbon reduction goals, a growing number are opting to burn wood to produce power on campus. Southern Oregon University is vying to be the first campus in the Northwest to adopt this biomass technology, as it’s called.

Tucked away on the backside of Southern Oregon University’s Ashland campus is a modest 1950s era warehouse. Puffs of cloud-white steam emerge from its smokestack, the result of burning natural gas to produce heat for the campus.

Many large universities in the US produce at least some of their own energy – it’s just cheaper. But when boilers age and fail, people like SOU Facilities Manager Drew Gilliland have a choice to make.

Drew Gilliland: “Like a good ol’ car, you can keep making repairs as long as you can. But they’re not very efficient.”

At this point, Gilliland says it makes more sense to replace – and maybe change things up a bit. The idea: build a new facility to make steam heat and electricity - and do it without burning fossil fuels. Their answer is biomass.

Drew Gilliland: “That’s a dirty little secret about natural gas is when it’ cheap, these large producers of electricity will switch to that for their fuel. And then, of course, as it gets higher they’ll go back to coal. So we’ll never really have really cheap gas and so that’s why as we look at our fuel costs we want something that’s a little more reliable and local.”

SOU studied several options and decided burning woody biomass sourced within 50 miles of campus would be cheaper than natural gas. An added bonus is that, if done right, biomass can be a low-carbon energy source.

Debbie Hammel is a Senior Resource Specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Debbie Hammel: “There’s good biomass and there’s bad biomass from a carbon emissions perspective and it’s really critical to distinguish between the two.”

Hammel says logging whole trees specifically to burn results in more carbon emissions in the shorter term. But using slash – the leftovers from logging operations that would decay quickly or be burned on-site – is a much more carbon-friendly option. The latter is what Southern Oregon University intends to do.

Looking for low-carbon options has become somewhat of an obsession of higher-ed across the country. Nearly 700 institutions have signed up for the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment – setting a carbon neutrality target date and taking steps to meet it.

Brett Pasinella is with the Presidents’ Climate Commitment. He says universities start with efficiency and move on to changing behaviors on campus.

Brett Pasinella: “But then after that, then you have to really look at how you’re generating heat and electricity on campus.”

Pasinella says biomass accounted for 41% of all on-campus renewable power generation in 2012. But campus biomass has yet to make it to Oregon, Washington or Idaho, despite the region’s broad availability of fuel.

In 2011, the University of Montana retracted a biomass proposal after the community rallied against it. Southern Oregon wants to avoid that fate, and recently held a public meeting to address local concerns. Most of the questions focused on pollution and the poor air quality in the Rogue Valley.

John Fisher-Smith: “See my voice is a little bit froggy right now. Because I live here and my wife likes the window open at night.”

Ashland resident John Fisher-Smith says he wears masks when the amount of particulate matter is high.

John Fisher-Smith: “Why not make public health in Ashland the primary, first criteria and go from there?”

Looking up at the large boilers currently heating SOU, Drew Gilliland says, bottom line, biomass is good economics. And it would put the university decades ahead of its deadline to be carbon neutral by 2050.

Copyright 2014 Earthfix