For many of us in the biomass thermal industry, March and April were busy months. Whether one is an emissions expert who attended the Pellet Stove Design Challenge at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island, a manufacturer who exhibited at the Northeast Biomass Heating Expo in Burlington, Vermont, an attendee of the International Biomass Conference & Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina, or any of the other trade shows and workshops around the country, there were certainly plenty events to partake in.

At the same time, there has been significant activity in another part of the industry, in the area of biomass fuel and equipment standards. BTEC, for example, is in the midst of collecting feedback on our efficiency test method for commercial-size biomass boilers, and anticipates starting work on an American wood chip fuel standard soon. These two projects will benefit the industry, as they fill a gap in American standards regarding solid biomass. Currently, there is no industrywide, accepted efficiency and emissions measurement for commercial-size solid fuel boilers (the EPA New Source Performance Standard covers residential, and Boiler Maximum Achievable Control Technology rules take effect for boilers over 10 MMBtu per hour). In many ways, specifying wood chip fuels is still the “Wild West.” Both of these projects will look to existing U.S., European and ISO standards, but will ultimately be shaped by what requirements and methods are best-suited to the complex American market.

Where there are already accepted and useful standards in place, the creation of another standard may cause uncertainty and confusion in the industry, as well as present another hurdle for fuel suppliers. This would seem to be the case in the recent developments from NESCAUM, the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, which recently announced its intention to initiate the creation of a regional biomass pellet fuel standard for the northeastern U.S. The fact that many pellets in the U.S. are sold as “premium” and yet can contain many different contaminants was an issue raised by a NESCAUM representative as necessitating this proposed project.

Biomass industry observers are aware that the Pellet Fuels Institute, CanPlus and ENPlus standards are already recognized by the U.S. EPA as fuel standards in the U.S. The fact that some pellet producers do not certify their product to any standard, but ensure that pellets live up to their ingredient labels, is laudable in terms of making biomass fuels as clean-burning as possible. Nonetheless, increasing the regulatory and certification burden on an industry that is already under pressure from warm winters and unnaturally low fossil fuel prices risks causing more problems that can't be justified by ferreting out a few corner-cutting fuel manufacturers. Manufacturers who have already made significant investments to certify their pellets would face another burden, while there is no guarantee that a new regional standard would have the weight to significantly change the behavior of those who already are less-than-careful with their feedstocks.

We strongly discourage regional standards and favor strengthening national standards as desired through inclusion of other organizational and regulatory interests. It seems that regulatory goals, in terms of emissions and quality control, would be much more achievable by adding rigor to current national standards, cooperatively with entities such as NESCAUM, to address the issues of chemically treated wood and other materials like plastic and heavy metals, instead of creating a whole new regional standard. The mixing of a regulatory fix and a standards solution may take good collaboration, and we are optimistic that this is the right approach.


Author: Ben Bell-Walker
Manager of Technical Programs, Biomass Thermal Energy Council
Ben.bell-walker@biomassthermal.org
202-596-3974