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UNFF-CDM Micro-gridsLocation: International projects, worldwide "Convinced that concerted efforts should focus on ... the sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests for the benefit of current and future generations," the United Nations has declared 2011 "The Year of the Forest." And it's not just about the forest; it's about living in the forest, which millions of people do, worldwide. Through it's United Nations Forum of Forests, some of the UN's 729 collaborative "UNFF Clean Development Mechanism" projects:
Because water in many rivers and lakes worldwide is not potable, electricity is used to treat drinking water, as well as to produce light and heat; its last use is to power manufacturing. Some of the manufacturing creates value-added alternative forest products, which are exported worldwide. So how is this applicable to the Sierra? Some Sierra communities, businesses, and government buildings are remote, so they qualify as federal rural development areas. Although these goals and benefits of developing rural areas in this century are similar to United States Rural Electrification programs in FDR's New Deal of the 1930's, methods used to accomplish these goals are now more sustainable. Many of these electricity generation systems use renewable local biomass to power Condensed Steam Turbines. "This is not new technology," says a United Nations Natural Resource Consultant based in the United States. "Many of these self-contained systems are made in France, India or China, and can burn either brown or green material, or both. They burn cleaner with one or the other, but in many developing nations, their first concern is the energy, so they burn whatever they have. Consequently, when we collect environmental monitoring data, the plants sometimes exceed pollution limits established by the very Kyoto Protocol that established these biomass programs." For that reason, he says, there is not accurate environmental impact data to recommend a simple technology that could be installed in remote Sierra communities "within weeks." According to Gerald Willis, USDA, certain areas of the remote Sierra, where the co-generation plants can be connected to a micro-grid, are appropriate for these types of easily transportable, self-contained biomass plants. But there would be a difference: to meet higher air quality standards, a plasma arc generator, which burns biomass at such a high temperature that it can even burn biohazard waste, leaving only the building blocks of matter as waste, can be used as a primary burner. A remote hospital, or prison could generate its own reliable electricity. Northern California Natural Resource Consultant Dennis Schuetzle concurs. Small, portable systems are economically viable only for very remote locations, or government-subsidized schools, hospitals, or prisons: areas where the costs of chipping and transportation of biomass, (about $40/ton in 2007), or costs disposal of biohazard waste is higher than the costs of running the co-generation system. In these areas, the benefits of biomass utilization for power outweigh the costs. Widely used in Europe, a pilot system is made in Ukiah, CA by Retech Systems LLC. These systems are costly, and usually funded with grants. As many public and private funding organizations for rural development have similar overarching goals and requirements, both domestically and worldwide, consultants advise applying to a cross-section of government and non-governmental organizations, using universally applicable parts of the United Nations suite of forestry toolkits. For more about:
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