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Across the United States interest in bioenergy has increased markedly in recent years. Both rural and urban communities often ask important questions about the sustainability of wood-based bioenergy proposals.

• How big is too big?
• Will wood energy markets change forest management opportunities? 
• Can biomass be sustainably recovered? 
• Do wood energy projects retain and/or create jobs in rural communities? 
• Do contractors and landowners get fair prices for the wood they sell? 
• Will wood energy markets bolster or compete with existing industries? 
• Is wood energy good or bad for environmental quality and the climate?
  

It can be difficult to answer such questions within the context of individual projects that are broadly believed to result in social, economic, and environmental benefits. A systematic way of addressing such questions is needed to help communities considering wood energy and the Pinchot Institute is developing a way to evaluate and document the results of wood energy projects in on-the-ground pilot communities. When complete, this project will offer a nationally applicable method for any community to monitor and document the sustainability of their wood energy projects that will be tested in a few select pilot communities now developing wood energy projects.

The community of Vernonia, Oregon (population 2,380) will be the location of the first community sustainability pilot. Located in Oregon’s Coast Range, Vernonia is surrounded by some of the most productive forestland in the nation. In the midst of adjusting to an economy that is transitioning away from being purely natural resource-based, Vernonia has been devastated by two 500-year floods in the last eleven years (1996 and 2007). The community is now in the process of rebuilding itself on a platform of rural sustainability. Given Vernonia’s strong cultural and economic connections to forests and an interest in renewable energy, wood thermal energy projects have emerged as part of the rebuilding effort.

Within the next few years the community health care clinic, senior citizens center, and food bank are all being rebuilt and co-located on a brownfield redevelopment site outside the floodplain in the “Rose Avenue Project.” These buildings will be heated by the Vernonia Thermal Energy Center (VTEC) an advanced wood biomass heating system. In addition to this facility, the new LEED certified K-12 school is also to be heated by a similar wood biomass system.
The Pinchot Institute is working to develop a multi-party team in Vernonia to assess the sustainability of these bioenergy projects as they develop and to document and share lessons learned.

For more information contact Brian Kittler, Project Director.