Unearthing insights for a Sustainable Future in a
Rural South Carolina Forest
Dan Richter’s Team Investigates Environmental Effects of Wood Energy p. 2
by Tim Lucas
“The use of wood-powered heating, cooling and electricity is definitely gaining momentum. Central European nations, and the Scandinavian countries, in particular, see it as a readily available, renewable and clean energy source that can complement wind and solar power,” Richter says. “In the future, it seems almost certain that wood will once again become a very significant source of energy in all nations.”
Last spring, Richter visited Austria with Duke School of Forestry alumnus John Karakash to tour some of the world’s most advanced wood-fueled power plants to see firsthand “whether modern society can learn to use wood energy more sustainably than we did in the past.”
This fall, he is leading a class of Nicholas School Master of Forestry and Master of Environmental Management students on field trips to wood energy facilities and forest sites in the southeastern United States.
“The public has an image of wood burning as being smoky and not very good for the planet. But Austria’s two-decade experiment with using wood energy demonstrates that advanced wood combustion is a clean technology that can be rapidly implemented,” he says.
Wood-fueled energy systems work in much the same way as conventional systems that burn coal or heating oil. Every month or so, a new supply of pulp, chips or other low-value wood products is delivered to the site and stored until needed. Mechanized augers move the wood into a high-efficiency fire box, where it is burned and efficiently converted into heat and electricity. Steam can be piped underground to the surrounding community. It’s a relatively simple technology, compared to a wind turbine or a photovoltaic panel, Richter says. With retrofitting, many coal plants can co-fire wood.
In Austria, he toured one of the world’s largest wood-energy-fueled power plants, built in downtown Vienna with the backing of the Austrian Green Party. The plant provides heat and electricity for up to 50,000 people.
In the town of Güssing, 100 miles south of Vienna, he toured a mediumscale generator, powered by wood chips and trimmings from local forests and wood industries, that provides heat and electricity to 4,000 people, with enough left over to export energy back into the nation’s power grid. He also toured several small-scale generators called “energy cabins” that are co-powered with solar thermal panels. Entrepreneurs are installing these small power plants in a variety of environments, including isolated stretches of the Austrian countryside, to provide heat and electricity for villages, hotels, highway rest stops, farms and other far-flung locations. Researchers also are developing energy cabins to provide cooling.
Wood energy offers environmental advantages as well, Richter says. “It is carbon neutral in regard to the wood burned, as compared to coal and other fossil fuels,” he says.
photo captions: Richter at the Calhoun Forest; panorama of the Calhoun Forest; Richter, Jason Jackson, Meg Mobley and Jian Wei Li surveying the Calhoun site.