Middlebury College Plants Willow Trees for Biofuel

Posted by Kristy Kershaw on October 20, 2009 at 12:28 pm

The biomass gasification plant at Middlebury College in Vermont. (image: nytimes.com)

The Associated Press reported Sunday on a new effort by Middlebury College to turn willow trees into biofuel. While Middlebury used to heat its buildings with oil and then wood chips, the college recently planted a nine-acre patch of willow shrubs, the first step in an attempt to convert the trees into biomass energy. The college started the experiment amid worries that using wood chips for fuel would eventually lead to the deforestation of Vermont. Willows were selected as a possible answer because they grow faster than other trees, branch out when pruned, and can be harvested in cold weather when the ground is frozen.

The college currently buys 20,000 tons of wood chips a year, which are then put into a “gasifier” that converts the wood into gases that can be burned in a boiler. The wood chips heat about half the campus. Heating oil still heats the rest, but the use of wood chips—begun last winter—will reduce Middlebury’s annual oil bill by $700,000. Given the success of the program, the worry became that other colleges, institutions, and homeowners may follow Middlebury’s lead and deplete Vermont’s wood resources; hence the willow experiment.

“We wanted to anticipate the possibility that our success might encourage increased use of the forests for other biomass systems, and we also wanted to take advantage of another natural resource that we have in abundance in Vermont, and that’s open land for use in agriculture,” said Jack Byrne, director of sustainability for the college.

According to Middlebury’s website, the goal of the willow project is to “cut the College’s consumption of heating oil in half – by roughly 1 million gallons per year.” It is also a cornerstone of their plan to become carbon neutral by 2016. In addition to a description of the project, Middlebury’s site also offers up an FAQ and a video slideshow on the willow project (see below).

Middlebury is joined in the willow project by the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Tim Volk of SUNY predicts that willow fuel, along with traditional wood sources, could be a viable option for the future. “It’s something that’s going to start happening fairly quickly in the next few years,” he said. “People can start up a small-scale heating system with biomass, using a mixture of willows and low-value wood harvested from natural forests.”

The news from Middlebury comes on the heels of an announcement out of Boston University earlier this month that they will begin recycling cooking oil for use as a heating agent. As HeatingOil.com reported, cooking oil from on-campus dining halls will be used to heat thirteen of the university’s buildings. There have been similar reports on the use of biofuel in Maine, New Hampshire, and the state of Massachusetts.

As Middlebury puts together its findings on the willow project, one thing is certain. Northeastern states are increasingly investing in alternative energy sources, hoping to scale back demand on heating oil, make the environment a little cleaner, and make the costs a little more manageable.