A Native Grass Pellet Bio-Heat Roadmap for Wisconsin

Agrecol | June 2008 | Porter et. al.

Executive Summary

… The study found that switchgrass can be grown successfully and cost effectively in Wisconsin. It does not require any new technology and can be grown with existing farm practices and equipment. It is also a strong candidate for pelleting. Pelleting allows switchgrass to overcome many logistics inherent to agricultural biomass: the uniform size allows it to be handled and stored easily, transported more economically and burned more efficiently.

By converting to switchgrass pellets the businesses in this study reduced their fuel costs an average of 42%, with the greatest savings coming from facilities that switched from LP to pellets.

The study found that a 100,000 marginal acres (highly erodible and environmentally sensitive) could realistically produce 500,000 tons of switchgrass while markedly improving water quality, wildlife habitat and reducing global warming pollution. This volume of biomass represents $70 million of farmer grown energy and would replace
the estimated $72 - $174 million now exported for natural gas, LP or fuel oil. The money retained in the state would produce farm profits, new business enterprises for harvesting, transportation and processing biomass along with new employment opportunities for workers in the clean energy economy. It is well understood that locally grown and owned projects generate more jobs and more rural economic benefit than those with outside ownership.

In addition the study found that switchgrass, even when grown on marginal sub-prime land in Wisconsin produces more than nine times the energy per acre of land than does the leading biofuels technology of corn (grain) ethanol. This high efficiency in energy production is the result of several factors: switchgrass efficiently captures solar energy, the entire plant is utilized for fuel processing, the bioconversion process retains all the energy captured in the field and the production/conversion process is more energy efficient than corn ethanol…

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