WSC’s plan for biomass boiler goes up in smoke

County’s plan hasn’t changed

Western State College is pulling the plug on its plan to install a biomass boiler in the renovated Taylor Hall, putting a hitch in Gunnison County’s own alternative energy plans.

The college gave “long-term operating costs and potential environmental impacts” as the reasons it was tabling the idea, after finding out that a financial partnership with the county wasn’t going to be possible.
The Gunnison Board of County Commissioners has been working hard for the last couple of years to bring the practice of institutional wood-burning back from the history books, and they weren’t alone. Western State College (WSC) was also looking hard at the technology for its own facilities.
Between the two entities, three buildings within a few miles of one another—WSC’s Taylor Hall, the county’s jail and public works facility—are being built or renovated with biomass heating in mind.
But the question of where to get the wood remained. Despite the college being surrounded by trees, there would have to be a lot of time and money spent getting those trees processed and transported.
“The college had approached the county and the thought was ‘Let’s partner on the supply side since there is no commercial source [for the chips] locally,’” WSC vice president for finance and administration Brad Baca says.
The county had space, heavy equipment and manpower to process trees—provided primarily through the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management—into wood chips. The college had gotten a grant late last year to buy and install a wood chipper and storage shed.
Since a college campus in a relatively residential setting isn’t a very good place for a loud machine that makes big trees into wood chips, partnering to put the college-owned chipper on county property seemed to make a lot of sense.
But there was a catch: the chipper would need to be purchased with federal money being funneled through the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) as a $284,000 New Energy Economic Development (NEED) grant. The college would need to amend the grant to stipulate that the chipper would be on county property.
While the college and county were committed to a partnership, the details didn’t translate well with GEO.
“To do that we needed to get approval from GEO,” Baca says. “They weren’t very receptive.”
GEO’s weak reception to the idea surprised Baca, as well as county manager Matthew Birnie, who agree that bringing the two entities together would have been a benefit to everyone involved. Teaming up to boost supply would simply make the chips cheaper to produce.
And cost is key. Without the county’s contribution, WSC would have to produce its own supply of chips and maintain the equipment as well as run the boiler, which Baca thinks could cost the college as much as 40 percent more than if they stick with natural gas.
Part of the billowing cost of the boiler could also come from Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring an expensive emissions control filter on the boiler, but that hasn’t been finalized, according to a WSC press release.
The county has already found cost to be the main inhibitor in its biomass plans. Birnie told the commissioners they would be keeping a $750,000 boiler system out of the plans for the public works facility because the money “just isn’t there.”
The story is similar at the jail, except a biomass boiler had always been an investment for the future in that design. Now it might wait even longer.
County Commissioner Hap Channell has been a big advocate for biomass use in the county and is “a bit discouraged” by the setback. “The fact that we had the possibility of having three of these boilers within a mile of each other created an economy of scale that brought cost down for both entities,” he says. “Now that Western is removed, that’s a bit of a concern.”
The future for biomass at Western is uncertain. With a campus surrounded by public forests, Baca can’t see why the college wouldn’t consider biomass some other time. Taylor Hall will already be built to suit. But there are no guarantees.
“We’re certainly committed to sustainable practices and I think biomass could be one of those. But what we do on campus has to meet economic criteria, environmental criteria and educational goals,” Baca says. “I can’t say with any certainty that biomass is something we’re completely committed to at this point.”
But biomass is still on the WSC table and the county is equally, if not doubly, committed to the same end at the jail and public works facility, which makes Channell hopeful. “It hasn’t changed my commitment to biomass as an alternative energy a bit,” he says.