A perennial discussion point among the individuals and small businesses that are working on agricultural biomass projects is whether the New York Biomass Energy Alliance, the Northeast Biomass Thermal Energy Working Group, and the Biomass Thermal Energy Council are sufficiently focused on their specific interests to be worth joining. Aren’t those groups mostly dominated by wood energy interests who aren’t interested in grass as an energy source?
As someone actively involved with two of the three coalitions mentioned above, I can report that the question sometimes arises within those groups about how much time and energy they should spend on grass issues, given the very limited participation they get from folks in the grass energy sector. You can’t imagine how often we hear, when we suggest membership to folks from the grass energy sector, “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to join.”
The Biomass Energy Alliance came into being because its original members realized that if they just sat around talking about what politicians, government officials, and members of the public “need to understand” nothing was ever going to change. Someone has to make the case, and it has to be the right case for the right audience. And you have to get in the door to make the case in the first place.
The other thing we recognized was we were a splintered group of very small players, and that if we didn’t try to bring all the folks working on biomass energy under one roof, the very well-organized and well-funded nay sayers were very likely to shut us down, either by declaring our conversion processes insufficiently clean and green, or by continuing to put strictures into energy legislation that would effectively cut off our supplies of feedstock. We needed to be a “big tent” organization.
Including agricultural biomass interests in the coalition is obvious to us, since many of the companies working in this sector are working with agricultural materials, and those that work exclusively with forest products all recognize that wood supplies are not unlimited. Without the current supply of forest wood chips, we’d have next to no industry at all today. However, if we don’t figure out how to make purpose-grown biomass a reality, biomass energy won’t reach even a quarter of its long-term potential.
Since its inception, the Alliance has made a considerable effort to keep grass biomass in the discussion. Noting that the regular exchanges of e-mails after each Big Flats meeting weren’t producing the hoped-for systematic exchange of information, we started this blog last fall. We’ve been delighted to see the enthusiasm with which articulate spokespersons for different grass energy groups have taken up the challenging of providing useful content. As members of the planning committee for the last “Heat the Northeast” conference, Rick Handley and I made sure that there was programming on grass bioenergy, providing the names and contact information for most of the presenters to conference organizers.
The July 20 meeting in Ithaca has stimulated an excellent discussion of what the grass biomass sector needs in the research area, in public recognition, and in policy support. However, most of the suggestions looked more like goals than like strategies for getting from here to there. “Meet with the Governor” may sound like a strategy, but I can assure you, as one who has struggled to get meetings with people two or three levels below the Governor, meetings themselves are goals of a sort. They are also a waste of time for all concerned if you can’t leave behind something that’s very easy for the person you’re meeting with to act on. “Here’s my problem” doesn’t get you anywhere. A good meeting is the result of a great deal of attention to process, influence, and aligning your objectives with those of people who are more influential than you are.
Suggestions about the next place that public agencies should put money are also goals rather than strategies. Folks may imagine that funding organizations start out with a pile of uncommitted funds, just looking around for good ideas. Not so. Every petition for funds is a request that money be taken away from something that almost always has both a powerful outside constituency and probably supporters within the funding agency as well. If it didn’t have both, it would have lost its funding a long time ago. Money is directed to projects that officials believe to be worthwhile, and it’s hard for them to cut off people who have been doing good and conscientious work in the past. If you want public funds, you need to become an expert in where those funds come from, what the sidebars are for their expenditure, and who’s likely to scream when you propose reallocations. Or support an organization that can, over time, develop that expertise on your behalf.
During its monthly teleconference in August, the NYBEA Board discussed the ideas that came forward from the polling of people involved in the July 20 meeting. There was a clear consensus among those on the call that it will benefit all players to have agricultural biomass interests involved in what we are trying to do. The Board agreed that we should keep looking for ways to utilize our communication infrastructure to get the word out on what’s happing with grasses and other cropped biomass. The Northeast Biomass Heating Expo 2012 (“Heating the Northeast” conference renamed) will take place in Saratoga this year, and it can be another way to bring folks together to talk about grass biomass. The Alliance hopes to be involved in a prospective “Biomass Heating Roadmap” project sponsored by NYSERDA, and we can make sure that biomass is well-represented there as well.
The only suggestion in our discussion that did not receive strong support was the idea of the Alliance setting up special meetings in Albany exclusively focused exclusively on grass biomass. Board members who were “there at the beginning” recalled how trivial we appeared to the powers that be when we were all trying to “go it alone”. Better to include references to and suggestions in support different biomass energy segments within a broader message than to try to catch legislators’ separately for each industry segment’s individual concerns. The Board agreed that we need to keep agricultural biomass well-represented in our Board, and in meetings of all sorts, to maintain the balance that we seek to maintain among feedstocks and technologies.
So, yes, the Alliance believes it needs the active and committed support of folks from the grass energy sector to be the effective and broadly representative organization that it set out to become in April, 2009. We will keep trying to demonstrate to folks from that community that we can advance their cause, and to persuade them that they need us, and NEBTWG, and BTEC to do the things that can only be accomplished when people with overlapping (not identical!) interests work together.
Do grass energy entrepreneurs need the New York Biomass Energy Alliance (and vice versa)?
September 1, 2011 by dconable
Dan, this is a very cogent response and yes, we should all become members (I’m ashamed to say the Danby Land Bank hasn’t joined but we will), but it verges on same old, same old. What do you perceive as the next steps? It seems obvious to me that biomass for energy is going to have a hard time till CO2 reduction incentives are in place. And this financial and political climate is more concerned with economic recovery and debt reduction than climate change. The connection with new jobs from a new industry has not been made. How to we bridge this gap?
Fair comment, Betsy. Permit me an over-long reply.
Three years ago we all expected that a combination of technological progress and the climate change-related incentives that were already taking shape would serve as the foundation for all of the businesses we were trying to establish. My personal view about cap and trade at the time was that it would be impossible to implement without creating a bureaucratic nightmare, as well as wide-spread gaming of the system, and that our political system would figure that out before it ever happened. Then of course the climate change deniers came along… But I still thought we could at least do some sort of carbon tax. Now I’m not sure we’re going to see anything in the way of new incentives, and some of the existing ones may be rolled back.
So what can we look to to make agricultural biomass energy economically viable? My own personal view is that if the biomass energy sector can hang on for another couple years — and we don’t stumble into an a real economic catastrope — that we’ll be seeing much higher energy prices within two or three years, making our feedstock highly competitive with fossil fuels on a net energy basis, as it was in the spring of 2008, without incentives.
If I’m right about the potential for our industry to succeed without much direct government support, at least in the intermediate future, we still face another problem, which is the tendency of the regulatory system to benchmark every technology against the cleanest thing that’s out there. In the case of combustion systems, that’s natural gas. In response to this “all or nothing” approach, we have to push things in the direction of regulatory systems that ask for achievable incremental improvements in all areas, including emissions standards, with current technology as a starting point, rather than demanding that we achieve someone’s concept of the highest achievable standard at the outset. Otherwise, I really can’t see a way that, in the real world of consumer choice, there will be any way to get “from here to there.”
Supposing, then, that the “next step” we’re looking for is help on the regulatory front, the question then arises, who are our political friends? Probably not those that want to disassemble the regulatory agencies entirely, but also not those who believe that anything short of a perfect solution is a betrayal of the environmental cause.
Thank you Dan for your contribution and I know we have discussed this ourselves. And now here is my opinion.
I don’t like the policy of playing with the issue of your have to “pay to get results.” Maybe I worked in customer service for too long but I can give you this insight … I would spend extra on a service if I knew my money was being well spent and that I was going to be taken care of after the sale. And no matter how anyone wants to twist this, it is about a sale. We all need to support each other, not fight at every turn.
I know that funding is needed…it is with my home and my business, first and foremost. But, why can’t we come to some type of agreement somewhere along the way with people who could donate time to type up papers, create powerpoints, complete research, whatever…I heard the complaint about not having the funds to staff an office, well wouldn’t this assist with some of the issues and short comings we all face. One…the alliance needs assistance getting things completed and two…we would like to have our voices heard and be able to give some input.
And…on a side note I am going to complain on one thing. We were asked to supply our GOALS within that list of action items. A sort of list on where we, meaning the agricultural biomass and woody biomass, could work together yet seperately to gain some attention and traction within the state. I guess if we already had a strategy laid out, we wouldn’t need the alliance now would we?
Most of our concerns and issues are over not having the same opportunities as the “wood” people. I think if you actually sort through the list, you will see that all we really want to do are to get the FACTS out there, have it be heard and be able to just apply for the same grants as others do.
Just my humble opinion…and for now, I have to keep “going it alone” because I can’t afford to “pay” for the results.