Fight over biomass - Law making it difficult for businesses to expand

Missoulian.com
By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

After generations of disrespect, wood refuse is the material of the moment. It took two days to run through all the ways it can be thermochemically converted into gasoline, mixed with coal dust for clean-burning pellet fuel or cooked into charcoal to capture carbon emissions at the Montana Bioenergy Workshop in Missoula.And that's assuming it hasn't been assigned to more traditional uses like paper and particleboard.

"It's one of the biggest fears we have - that everybody else will take our fuel and burn it,” Roseburg Forest Products Co. plant manager Ken Cole told a group of bioenergy pioneers during a tour of his Missoula factory Tuesday. “The market for pellets and biomass is putting massive pressure on us.”

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