Adams State College Students Promote Biomass As Heat Source

Adams State College Students Promote Biomass As Heat Source

May 08 - The Pueblo Chieftain

It costs an estimated $100,000 a year to heat Adams State College's Plachy Hall fieldhouse with natural gas.

A group of ASC business students think they have found a solution that could save the school big bucks -- biomass.

The biomass would be drawn from otherwise wasted dead and downed trees from the forest as well as wood chips from sawmills.

The students -- Gina Genesio, Jerry Gibson, Cody Mueller and Liz Thomas -- spent this past year in their marketing class researching the project and delivered their findings Thursday to faculty, students and some community members.

The four partnered with some engineering students from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The students believe that using biomass could cut the college's expenditure to heat the huge fieldhouse to one-third of the cost of natural gas heating.

Plus, they maintain, biomass is renewable whereas natural gas comes from a dwindling fossil fuel that once used will be no more.

"Sources like oil and coal will be exhausted," Ms. Genesio said.

Heating the building with biomass would mean the erection of a building to house the stoves and equipment to process the wood chips, so there will be startup costs involved. Only an hour a day's maintenance would be needed, Ms. Genesio explained.

Ms. Thomas said sawmills -- the San Luis Valley has six -- would have no trouble producing wood chips of a uniform size. Better quality chips burn better but cost more. Estimates are $15 to $25 a ton.

And, Ms. Thomas added, natural gas prices are on the rise.

Alternative energy methods such as wind, solar and biomass are expected to reach the $85 billion generation mark per year within the next decade.

Ms. Thomas said she has talked to 10 of the 24 schools in Vermont, the national leader in biomass-for-heating use, and some saved more than $40,000 a year on heating costs by using biomass. In one Vermont housing project, monthly heating bills dropped to $50 from $200.

Biomass has the advantage of being low-cost and environmentally friendly, producing less sulfur and toxins than natural gas, Gibson said.

For the San Luis Valley, it could mean job creation and the money would stay in the area, Gibson added.

Mueller said residents "have strong ties to natural gas" and need to be educated on the advantages of using a biomass system.

He said if ASC's system worked well, perhaps others would demand heat from biomass and Xcel Energy could be encouraged to use alternative "green" energy here.

The students said that cost benefit estimates a payback for the investment between four and nine years, and an estimated savings of between $40,173 and $57,563 a year.

Adams State President Richard Wueste said the savings would be small, but what would sell him on the project would be the generation of jobs in the community.

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