Papermakers, researchers lead the way in development

By THOMAS CONTENT and JOEL DRESANG, www.jsonline.com, Dec. 8, 2007

Wisconsin already leads the nation in making electricity from cow manure. Now it hopes
to tap its farm andforest resources to develop the next generation of biofuels in the race
to curb global warming emissions. Cars and trucks are the second-leading contributor
of greenhouse gas emissions after coal-fired power plants, so around the state,
efforts are under way to juice up production of renewable fuels.

But the main renewable fuel in Wisconsin and other states today - ethanol derived from
corn kernels - doesn’t yield big savings in greenhouse gas emissions because so much
petroleum is needed to grow corn and refine it into ethanol.

The quest to find a better fuel has led Madison researchers and northern Wisconsin
papermakers to hatch plans to make alternative fuels out of all sorts of materials,
from wood chips in the paper sector to switchgrass or poplar trees.

The growing list of potential fuel sources can be summed up as ABC - anything but corn.

“While the state may not be able to match Silicon Valley as a high-tech leader, it could be the Cellulose Prairie and Forest for biopower and biofuels,” environmental consultant Brett Hulsey wrote in a recent report.

The fuels being developed hold the dual promises of reducing dependence on imported oil and curtailing emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas.

“So much of the attention has been on corn ethanol,” said Judy Ziewacz, executive director of the Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence. “And I’ve been trying to get the message out there for the state, ‘No, we’ve got other feedstock.’

“The paper industry and the forestry industry are going to be big players,” she said. “They need to be.”

Biofuels that aren’t made from corn kernels won a big boost last week when the U.S. House of Representatives approved a renewable fuels standard as part of an energy bill that also requires new cars to get significantly better gas mileage. The energy bill stalled Friday in the U.S. Senate, however.

Interest in next-generation ethanol, known as cellulosic ethanol, is percolating because of the federal government’s goal to produce 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017, said Masood Akhtar, president of the nonprofit consulting firm CleanTech Partners Inc. in Middleton. The energy bill in Congress is aiming for 36 billion gallons by 2022.

“All the experts that we talk with, they agree that corn-based ethanol can’t meet that goal,” he said. Competition with feed mills has caused a handful of corn ethanol plants to close recently, Akhtar said, underscoring the advantage of energy crops that aren’t eaten.

One mill’s innovation

When William “Butch” Johnson and a team of investors revived Flambeau River Papers from bankruptcy last year, they knew they had to slash energy costs to keep the business alive. Supported by its 300 Park Falls employees, the company began phasing out its use of coal, instead burning more wood chips, buying those that burned most efficiently.

From burning 55 tons of coal a day 16 months ago, Flambeau now relies on less than 10 tons a day and plans to be coal-free by the end of March. Various employee-led initiatives, including recovering heat and changing light bulbs, are saving more than $2 million a year in energy costs since production resumed in August 2006.

But that’s not enough. Johnson plans to build an $84 million demonstration project at the mill that would convert wood to energy - more than enough power to run the mill - as well as renewable transportation fuel.

Flambeau is asking the U.S. Department of Energy for $30 million for the project and has lined up $5 million from the State of Wisconsin and up to $28 million in industrial revenue bonds from the City of Park Falls. By becoming the nation’s first integrated pulp and paper mill to be free of fossil fuels, Flambeau would cut about 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. That would rival the carbon emissions from energy used in nearly 14,000 Wisconsin homes.

“This is kind of the confluence of separate but related things that could end up in a very good result,” said Bob Byrne, president and chief operating officer of Flambeau.

Earlier this year, the Energy Department awarded $385 million to six projects for cellulosic biorefineries. It’s expected to grant an additional $200 million to between five and 10 more projects in coming months. Flambeau is among the applicants.

“We’ve got a tough job in front of us to make sure we can try to keep the mill going,” Johnson said. The biorefinery would help shore up the future of the Park Falls economy, he said.

Efforts across Wisconsin

Across the state, efforts are multiplying to boost development of biofuels.

In Madison, scientists at Virent Energy Systems are developing ways to convert sugars from a variety of sources into a renewable fuel.

In Cashton, production is starting this month on a new kind of biodiesel - a fuel that taps corn oil, a waste from corn ethanol plants. Vehicles that run on biodiesel generate one-fourth the greenhouse gases of those that run on petroleum diesel, said Neil Young, co-founder of Best Energies, the firm building the Cashton plant.

“This is the first biodiesel plant anywhere to qualify for carbon credits” that would bring financial gain for green technologies down the road, Young said. His company showcased its technology during the United Nations climate conference last week in Bali, Indonesia.

Meanwhile, laboratories at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are getting rolling on scientific research to more easily break down the sugars in cornstalks and other plants. Earlier this year, UW received a $125 million award to establish its first federal research center in nearly a century, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.

Wisconsin is the only Midwest state to host one of the centers, and the Midwest is pivotal because it is home to so much feedstock that could make the region a powerful economic force in next-generation ethanol.

“Wisconsin is well-positioned, better than a lot of states, because of its forest waste, agricultural waste and mill waste,” said Christopher Damm, a researcher in advanced energy technology at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Damm is a critic of ethanol because of the energy needed to make it, particularly in the fertilizer used to grow corn. He also doesn’t care for the fact that it uses a crop that the United States exports as food to power vehicles that don’t get good gas mileage.

Development of renewable energy from biomass needs to proceed faster, said Mark Doudlah, owner of Agrecol Corp. in Evansville, which heats its laboratory and office with pellets made from prairie grass.

There’s so much attention - and government support - for corn ethanol that other forms of renewable bioenergy aren’t developing fast enough, Doudlah said.

“But hey, you’re talking to a corn farmer here, and I planted extra corn this year, too. I’m chasing the money like everybody else,” he said.

Because widespread deployment of cellulosic ethanol is at least a decade away, having corn ethanol production in place today is a step toward reducing oil imports and reducing greenhouse emissions, proponents say.

Paper industry’s effect

For Wisconsin, the paper industry’s energy shift would help reduce the state’s emissions because papermaking requires lots of energy, and much of it has come from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. The paper sector was second only to utilities in global warming emissions from Wisconsin industries in 2005, responsible for 5% of the state’s total emissions.

What’s happening in Park Falls has the potential to transform papermaking - an industry that’s older than Wisconsin and bigger here than anywhere else.

Consider that paper manufacturers handle hundreds of millions of tons of wood a year and have infrastructure, equipment and expertise to deal with forest-based biomass. Not only do paper firms make pulp, paper and other byproducts from wood, but they also use much of what they don’t need in the manufacturing process as fuel.

In fact, the pulp and paper industry gets more than half of its energy from biomass and is the largest producer of co-generated energy among U.S. manufacturers, according to Akhtar, of CleanTech Partners. Still, he notes that paper ranks as the fourth-largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels nationwide, so it still can benefit from shifting to forest biomass.

A project led by Akhtar involving seven paper companies, including Wisconsin Rapids-based Stora Enso North America, is attempting to do more with wood chips used in making pulp - developing both ethanol and an industrial chemical it could sell.

Akhtar estimates that the paper industry could produce enough ethanol annually to replace 1.6 billion to 2.4 billion gallons of gasoline, thus eliminating 15 million to 21 million tons of carbon dioxide from vehicle tailpipes.

The center of U.S. papermaking, Wisconsin is a logical focal point for forest-based biomass innovation, proponents contend.

“The papermaking and pulp-making processes that are here are really trying to survive,” said Tom Scharff, director of power and energy for Stora Enso North America. “So anytime they can increase their revenue . . . they’re going to go after it.”