BCAP: Matchmaking

Biomass Power & Thermal
By Anna Austin May 23, 2011

USDA announces first project area and expects to announce more matching payments soon.

The agency is still erring on the side of caution, however, as funding amounts are unclear—and the 2012 Farm Bill is looming—but approval of the first BCAP project area has restored some enthusiasm for the program.

BCAP project areas provide financial incentives—annual payments to land enrolled and establishment cost-share payments—to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to produce biomass crops for heat, power, biobased products and advanced biofuels.

BCAP Project Area No. 1, approved on May 5, was proposed by Missouri-based, farmer-owned cooperative Show Me Energy. The 39-county project area is in central and western Missouri and eastern Kansas, and will consist of lowland and highland native mix grasses, according to Show Me Energy board President Steve Flick. “We kept it simple; we’re using no woody biomass crops,” he says. “The farmers decide if they want to plant a highland mix or lowland mix, and they don’t have to harvest it initially if they don’t want to because it’s only mandatory to harvest it once in five years.”

Growers can sell their crop to any qualified biomass conversion facility. Flick says Show Me Energy will buy all biomass produced in the project area for use at its Centerview, Mo., biomass pellet plant, which is in the process of validating modular technologies for gasifying biomass pellets to produce electricity and biobutanol.

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