Joel Frizzell maneuvered the big machine like a Tonka truck, finessing joysticks to pick up trees and branches and pack them into the Timberjack slash bundler.
With a twist of his wrist, Frizzell scooped up the wood, packed it into bundles, wrapped it with twine and cut it to uniform packages weighing about 800 pounds each -- all while moving through standing trees and over boulders.
Folks say he's the best Timberjack slash bundler operator in North America.
"That's not saying much. I'm the only one in North America," Frizzell said with a hint of a smile.
The $500,000 machine is the only one of its kind on this side of the ocean. Made in Finland, it's designed to pluck woody materials called biomass off the forest floor.
Some say those bundles of twigs and little trees could be the fuel of Minnesota's future. That's why Frizzell's efforts are part of a new study to see if large-scale cutting of biomass is economically and environmentally worthwhile.
BURNING QUESTIONS
It's being heralded as nearly limitless, cheap and renewable energy that literally grows on trees.
Biomass is a fancy word for natural stuff that can be used as fuel. Just about anything organic will burn, including cornstalks and straw, turkey manure, garbage, hybrid aspen trees from plantations and bug-infested balsams.
In the Northland, biomass generally means the stuff left behind at logging sites, or trees and brush too small for loggers to bother cutting.
Promoters say biomass can help wean Minnesota off polluting coal, help make the state energy self-sufficient and create jobs in the north woods.
Critics say sucking more fiber out of the forests could hurt habitat for amphibians, insects and other wildlife. And they say little is known of the long-term effect on future forest growth.
A study being conducted on plots across the Superior National Forest should help shed light on how far biomass can go in Minnesota.
The study compares the cost of new harvesting techniques, prototype bundling equipment such as the Timberjack and even hand-cutting trees at 12 sites totaling about 180 acres. Scientists also are studying the plots before and after the cuts to gauge environmental effects.
Don Arnosti, project manager for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said the study should put real numbers behind claims that biomass is Minnesota's green answer to dirty coal.
"The people promoting biomass energy as an economic windfall really don't know how it will work because they don't know what the real cost of the fuel will be," Arnosti said. "As usual with natural resources, the promoters are way ahead of the protectors."
A $250,000 federal grant is paying for the study, a partnership between the Twin Cities-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the National Forest Service, the Laurentian Energy utility partnership and Forest Management Systems, a loggers cooperative.
Arnosti, a longtime conservation activist in Minnesota, has been criticized by some environmentalists for sponsoring the study.
"I think the biggest question we're going to help answer is what impact harvesting biomass has on the forest, on the environment," Arnosti said. "You can come out and oppose these things on their face, or you can take a look at the real impact and base your opinion on science."
SENDING ELECTRONS SOUTH
By year's end, the Hibbing and Virginia public utilities -- operating together as the Laurentian Energy Authority -- will produce steam heat and electricity by burning biomass. The utilities are building new wood boilers and a wood-processing site in an$80 million public project to convert coal and natural gas plants to accommodate wood chips ground from biomass.
Twin Cities-based Xcel Energy must buy Laurentian's excess electricity under a complicated state law that counts biomass as renewable energy and which tied the arrangement to nuclear waste storage at Xcel's Prairie Island., Minn., plant.
It's the largest new appetite for forest biomass in the state. The deal will generate about $570 million over 20 years for the Iron Range utilities, said Terry Leoni, Virginia Public Utilities manager. The money will help pay to upgrade and maintain both cities' aging steam and electrical systems.
By using biomass, the utilities expect to cut their use of coal by about 70,000 tons per year within five years, reducing carbon and mercury pollution.
"This is truly green energy," Leoni said. "It's carbon-neutral, and we'll be taking out the (sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution) along with the particulates."
Leoni said he's confident that plenty of biomass is available and that local loggers will be eager to supply the wood chips needed to run the boilers. He expects more than half to come from logging leftovers, with about 40 percent from brush or trees too small for mills. About 5 percent of the fuel will come from tree farms, Leoni estimates.
While there might be plenty of wood out there to burn, Leoni doubts many more wood-burning projects will be built in the Northland. Such boilers have been talked about in Duluth, Superior and other Northland towns looking for energy alternatives.
"If we were to get too much more capacity up here, I think we'd be scratching to find (wood fuel) at an affordable price," Leoni said.
NO SHORTAGE OF SCRUB
Supporters cite a 2005 study by UMD's Natural Resources Research Institute that shows plenty of biomass is available. The study found a 700,000-ton-per-year annual supply of wood biomass is available within a 100-mile radius of the Iron Range, with 500,000 tons available within 75 miles.
And that's just wood left behind at logging sites.
If loggers can find an economical way to harvest brush and small trees unwanted by mills, there's another 800,000 tons available, according to the study by Bill Berguson, NRRI soil scientist.
Jerry Birchem, who owns Mountain Timber Logging in Mountain Iron, said biomass will help diversify his business by adding a new market for wood. Birchem figures he'll be able to add 10 percent to his revenues at traditional logging sites by being able to capture tons of woody debris that paper mills and board plants don't want.
Birchem, who's part of the Forest Management Systems cooperative that already has a contract to sell the wood to the Iron Range utilities, said culling dead and downed timber for fire prevention could open yet another profitable avenue for his company.
While cutting exclusively for biomass is too expensive on its face, federal incentives or subsidies could make cutting biomass a profitable venture for loggers like Birchem -- and save taxpayers money in the long run.
"Cutting trees just for biomass doesn't make economic sense on its own," Arnosti said. "You have to think about this at multiple levels.... We spend millions and millions of dollars bulldozing fire breaks and trying to put fires out.
"If some of that money can be aimed at getting biomass out of the woods before a fire, we can do successful fire prevention at a much lower cost and with less environmental impact and get a product out of it."
But not everyone sees it that way. The Sierra Club has criticized large-scale biomass projects because they encourage public land managers to cut even more trees from forests already heavily logged for mills, said Clyde Hanson of Tofte, Sierra Club activist.
"All biomass has an ecological function. Removing it takes nutrients and organic material out of the land. Do it long enough and the biological productivity of the soil falls," Hanson said.
Hanson said Minnesota taxpayers and electricity customers will end up paying more as biomass projects are subsidized. Because of the impact on the forest, Hanson said biomass shouldn't be considered "green" energy.
But Mike Demchik, a forestry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who is studying the test plots before and after biomass harvesting, said more than enough woody debris is left behind at biomass harvesting sites.
"We're trying to figure out what we can take out and not have a negative impact," Demchik said. "But they're never going to take everything off a site. There's always some material left behind."
The key, Demchik said, is the fertility of the soil. And most forest soil in Minnesota is up to the task.
"I'm really excited about this," Demchik said. "It can help reduce fire danger in some spots where there's no interest from traditional markets. This won't work everywhere. But it should work at enough locations to make it viable."Duluth News Tribune
