New York Biomass Energy Alliance offers assessment calculator for woody-biomass projects

SYRACUSE — The New York Biomass Energy Alliance (NYBEA) today announced the completion and availability of an assessment tool to analyze the localized impacts of proposed woody-biomass energy projects.

The calculator is intended to help community leaders, planners, and developers “quickly and realistically” clarify potential project impacts and payback for their specific communities.

The tool is available online at www.biomassenergyqat.wordpress.com.

NYBEA developed the new application in partnership with the New York Farm Viability Institute. A grant from the U.S. Forest Service Wood Education and Resource Center (WERC) helped fund development of the calculator.

Princeton, W. Va.–based WERC is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, according to WERC’s website.

The Excel-based tool is “primarily” geared for use in the Northeastern U.S., including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the New England states, but communities around the country can use the assessment tool, NYBEA said.

The quick-assessment tool provides community members with “real-world, localized calculations” regarding the impact of a proposed project in four key areas that include economic costs and benefits, the sustainability of local forestry resources, air emissions, and transportation impacts, Alice Brumbach, NYBEA executive administrator, said in the news release.

She offered this example.

“The fuel-expense savings projection is one [that] community leaders should find of interest as heating with woody biomass is less expensive on a cost per BTU basis compared to fossil fuels,” Brumbach notes.

Project leaders can use the calculation software on the quick-assessment tool to enter information about the type of biomass system under consideration and to compare its impact to other types of heating systems, NYBEA said.

Data fields include the percent of heat load that the wood-based fuel will provide, the current annual fossil-fuel use, and the average cost of locally available wood-based fuel, such as wood chips and pellets, NYBEA said.

“This new resource lets local leaders input community-specific information on their own to achieve high level estimates of the impact of a proposed biomass system early in the project-development process,” Brumbach said.

Besides cost comparisons, the tool also addresses factors such as local employment, according to NYBEA.

The calculator also uses county-level, forest-harvesting inventory data from the U.S. Forest Service and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau to model project impacts, the alliance said.

The New York Biomass Energy Alliance is a coalition of individuals, businesses, and organizations working together to enhance support, understanding, and the use of sustainably produced farm and forest biomass as a source of renewable energy, the organization said.

The coalition has offices in Rensselaer and the Syracuse area, with the local office situated at the New York Farm Viability Institute at 159 Dwight Park Circle in the town of Geddes.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com