Better use of biomass

Biomass is big business in Baker County.

But it's not good business.

Over the past 20 years we've spent tens of millions of dollars in Baker County, and several billion dollars across the country, trying to douse burning biomass, which most people know better as trees and their detritus, such as limbs and twigs.

A majority of that money went to firefighters.

This is a pity, because biomass has the potential to cover a much bigger payroll if we truck it out of the woods before it burns and then process it into useful products.

We can, to list just three examples, burn biomass to heat schools and other public buildings; make ethanol out of it; and make fireplace pellets from it.

These markets for biomass are still in their infancy, though, so biomass, compared with, say, sawlogs, isn't worth much.

As a result, federal agencies such as the Forest Service and BLM, which manage much of the land that's rich in biomass, don't have companies lining up to haul the stuff away.

A bill which Oregon Congressman Greg Walden introduced this month could make biomass more economical.

The bill would broaden the definition of ethanol in the 2007 federal energy bill to include ethanol made from biomass taken from federal forests.

Walden contends that his bill would encourage ethanol producers to consider biomass as a source of raw material.

We hope he's right.

We like the concept of turning excess biomass into a fuel which, unlike petroleum, is renewable.

That's a much more attractive scenario than watching, summer after summer, as our biomass, and the products it could have made, turn into smoke.