Wood waste eyed as renewable energy source in Missouri Ozarks

By ALAN SCHER ZAGIER
Associated Press Writer

CUBA, Mo. (AP) -- The forest-rich Missouri Ozarks have been quite good to the four generations of kin at McGinnis Wood Products, a supplier of white oak barrels to distillers and winemakers the world over.

Business is so good, there's even a market for the 120 tons of sawdust produced daily as remnants from the plant's two lumber mills. Rather than haul the wood waste to the landfill, McGinnis sells its scraps to a nearby Kingsford charcoal factory.

So when a pair of forestry extension agents approached the company to promote the use of wood waste as a renewable energy source, general manager Don McGinnis was intrigued. But until those ideas can translate into money in his pocket, he plans to remain an observer, not a participant.

"It's a great idea," he said. "There's wood just laying there and dying. And we know there's a need for it. It's just getting to the point where its profitable."

Turning sawdust, wood pellets, bark, branches and other unused forest products into a source of cleaner energy isn't a new idea, especially in developing countries where access to natural gas and electricity can be sparse. Some southern states, including South Carolina, offer tax incentives to encourage the use of wood waste and other biomass products.

The effort in Missouri, though, is relatively new. In recent weeks, forestry agents from both the University of Missouri and the state Department of Conservation have held town hall meetings to drum up interest in Cuba and Fredericktown, with another session scheduled later this month in Thayer near the Arkansas border.

The outreach efforts are targeting communities heavily dependent on logging, sawmills and agriculture - businesses that generate a significant amount of wood waste. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that nearly 80 million cubic feet of logging residue sat idle in privately-owned Missouri forests last year, with another 80,000 tons of leftover sawdust at lumber mills statewide.

"Missouri forests are undermanaged and overstocked," said Cliff Metcalf, a participant at the Cuba meeting and director of environmental operations for Hansen's Tree Services of O'Fallon. "Tapping into that makes sense, if it can be done economically."

Businesses are increasingly starting to take notice. Dynamotive Energy Systems Corp., a Canadian company, plans to build what it calls this country's first commercial industrial bio-oil plant in Willow Springs, a southern Missouri town near the Mark Twain National Forest. The heating oil is formed through a process known as pyrolysis that involves burning wood while withholding oxygen.

In Cuba, a Crawford County town about 80 miles southwest of St. Louis, a biomass energy company is quietly seeking investors for a potential project, McGinnis said. Ameren Corp., the state's largest utility, is also exploring ways to enter the biomass market, company officials said.

Such ventures are being watched closely by forestry groups. A decade ago, the arrival of two high-capacity wood chip mills in southeast Missouri prompted then-Gov. Mel Carnahan to create an advisory committee amid concerns that such businesses would deplete a valued natural resource through overforesting or even clearcutting on private lands.

"We've got to be careful," said John Tuttle, a forest products specialist with the state conservation department. "We definitely need to make sure we're not exploiting the resource."

Instead, Tuttle and his colleagues want to encourage local governments, hospitals, schools and small businesses to consider wood waste as a means of generating their own power rather than relying on utility companies.

That's how McGinnis Wood Products heats the dry kilns to produce steam to bend its barrels, which wind up storing Jim Beam, Heaven's Hill and other Kentucky whiskeys.

It's also the approach Northwest Missouri State University first pursued three decades ago after the local utility cut off the natural gas supply one winter.

Faced with the expense of hauling fuel oil on tanker trucks from 600 miles away in Memphis, Tenn., the university decided to build its own wood-to-energy operation. The combination of wood chips, paper pellets and animal waste converted to energy provides enough power to meet 85 percent of the heating and cooling needs on campus.

That approach has saved the university an average of $375,000 annually over the past 25 years, said Bob Bush, a retired Northwest Missouri vice president who is now a renewable energy consultant. With rising energy costs and no more loan payments to make on the original project, those savings now approach $1.5 million annually, he said.

The wood products used by the university were "clean and abundant," Bush said. "And they had to do something with them."