FORT KENT, Maine — A sizable grant from the Maine Department of Conservation is being used at the University of Maine at Fort Kent to make two of its largest buildings more energy efficient.
On Thursday, UMFK had a ribbon cutting ceremony to dedicate its new biomass system, paid for with a $500,000 DOC grant funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The new wood-to-energy heating system will convert more than 90 percent of the campus from foreign heating oil to locally sourced, renewable biomass fuels. It will heat the UMFK Sports Center athletic complex and its largest residence hall, The Lodge.
The award was announced last May. The alternative fuel system will provide heat for 1.75 acres of floor space and is expected to save the campus nearly $1 million in heating costs in the next decade.
“Replacing non-renewable, foreign fossil fuels with renewable, local biomass fuels promotes sustainable, regional resource development,” UMFK President Wilson G. Hess said. “Promoting renewable biomass fuels is an important economic development opportunity for northern Maine. It is part of our broader vision for UMFK to model sustainable economic and environmental practices.”
Using the grant money, UMFK has replaced one of two fuel oil boilers located in its Sports Center with the high-efficiency biomass boiler. One of the oil-fired boilers previously used at the Sports Center has been retained as a backup boiler for emergencies, during maintenance of the new system and to supplement the new system during times of peak demand.
The Sports Center and The Lodge consume, on average, more than 37,000 gallons of heating oil annually, according to officials at UMFK. The college expects to burn approximately 270 tons of wood pellets annually based on the energy conversion.
At current retail prices of $3.85 per gallon for heating oil, and $235 per ton for wood pellets, the university expects an annual savings of nearly $80,000 in heating costs. Projected over a ten-year period and assuming additional savings for bulk deliveries, the savings would approach $1 million.
The new heating plant is multifuel, capable of burning various biomass products depending on price and availability. Two storage silos located in a storage bin adjacent to the facility’s boiler room will provide space for more than 60 tons of wood pellets.
An associated benefit of the conversion to the wood-to-energy boiler is a carbon reduction of approximately 375 tons per year, resulting from the decrease of heating oil burned.
The entire project cost $858,000, which included a cash match of $318,000 from the university and $40,000 from in-kind labor contributions.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins fought to secure the federal funding. She congratulated the college on the ribbon cutting.
“The biomass project you have completed, with this $500,000 grant, will provide long-term benefits to local jobs and create an environmentally friendly system which will aide in the sustainability of natural resources,” Collins wrote in the letter. “Through the combined hard work of many people, the university has made this biomass system a reality. Your completed project will be the perfect role model for other communities and universities around Maine.”
Six months after the first grant, UMFK received a $2.6 million U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development High Energy Cost grant. It is expected to lower heating costs for UMFK and nearby Fort Kent Community High School by 80 percent through the installation of a biomass heating system.
The biomass system will heat a total of 11 buildings on the campuses of UMFK and the high school.
The heating system will be connected to the neighboring campuses by underground pipes through which water heated by the biomass furnace will travel.
Biomass is an opportunity and a threat–if we are careful in what we leave standing, we can use this market to cut out the junk and release trees that will grow into sawlogs that support more downstream jobs than biomass does. This would be economically and ecologically solid.
If we just add biomass to the list of things that we have mined out of our state’s forests with no thought of replacement or improvement, we will be stuck with the lowest stumpage values, hard and unprofitable logging, and very few jobs adding value to forest products.
I’d like to think the people of this state are funding forestry and forest management programs at UMO and UMFK so that we can do better than we have in the past. This will be their test–do we take the opportunity to add value wherever possible (recognizing that it is not always possible), or do we burn it all today?
Thank you Keith, good points.
It seems DO-able, based on foreign practices.
For instance, when we began the entry of wood-pellet -stoves- here, I read about Germany and Austria … where they run -furnaces- on bulk deliveries in 85% percent of the residential buildings.
They claim it is ALL “waste” by-product from the lumber and paper industries – not from additional harvesting.
I hope America can learn to do as well, and frankly I’m surprised there isn’t a major conversion already -long- underway.
The Germans have always been leaders in forestry, we’ve adopted some of their systems here under a variety of names, but not enough and not on a wide enough scale in my opinion. We should definitely keep a close eye on what they’re getting up to over there and how it works out for them.
We had a big flush of interest in biomass the last time the price of oil was high (during the oil crisis), but when the price of oil dropped back down, the interest in biomass went away and a lot of equipment was mothballed.
If we took our cues from common sense and good management (and maybe the Germans) rather than our adventures in the Middle East and resulting price fluctuations, our system would probably be pretty solid by now.
Because UMFK is located at the confluence of two rivers, it would be interesting to see the students experiment with small scale run-of-the-river hydroelectricity projects.
Let’s not forget conservation and insulation, not that the northern folks need to be reminded. The biomass plants were originally sold on the principle that they would use scrap wood, but then in practice it turns out there is a lot of clearcutting everything for biomass.