Energy from
Local Wood

And Grasses?

By M. D. Drysdale

Randolph has received a $25,000 grant to study whether an energy plant burning "biomass"—wood and grass pellets—would be economically feasible.

The Vermont Department of Public Service grant was made last week to the Randolph Area Community Development Corp. The Department awarded $2 million in grants for 17 proposals, out of 34 submitted.

Julie Iffland, the executive director of RACDC explained that the year-long study will focus on the possibility of a plant, perhaps located near the landfill, that would manufacture electricity and also supply hot water for heating to large users in the Village like the medical center.

The study, she said, will ask three questions:

• Can we use it?

• Can we make it?

• Can it be local?

The ideal scenario, she said, would be a process which provides a market for local forest and field products, provides jobs to produce the energy, and directs locally-produced energy to local users.

Partners for the project are the Center for Sustainable Practices at Vermont Technical College, and the Biomass Energy Resource Center (BERC) in Montpelier. Iffland’s husband, Chris Recchia, is executive director of BERC.

According to a release, the project resulted from a meeting last March, in which various state and national groups met with state agencies and the staff of Sen. Patrick Leahy to discuss "innovative ways to use local resources for energy production."

The project will be able to use some of the results of a recent study completed by Lincoln AgriSource, the company of Sam Lincoln of Randolph Center. Lincoln’s study of wood pellet gasification, was funded by USDA Rural Development.

That study found, Iffland said, that electrical generation with pellets would not be economically feasible by itself, but that it could be if the heat from the process could be recovered by co-generation.

The study would include the possibility of manufacturing the pellets themselves, Iffland said.

Most of the work would be done by contracting with BERC, she said.