Looking to reduce Duluth's dependence on fossil fuels and better position the city as a home for ecological-based industries in Minnesota, Mayor Herb Bergson said Wednesday he's developing a list of initiatives to be unveiled in the weeks ahead.
The mayor's goals are multifaceted and based on reducing city expenses, improving environmental quality and creating jobs, he said.
Bergson worked Wednesday to advance the discussion with a tour of the Canal Park Duluth Steam Cooperative plant, which provides heat and hot water to government, commercial and multifamily buildings in much of the downtown.
Putting more homes and businesses on city steam heat would be one way to reduce the consumption of natural gas and heating oil -- both expected to increase in price by 30 to 50 percent as winter approaches.
Bergson wants the city to learn more about expanding the steam heat plant with a new boiler capable of burning alternative fuel sources, including biomass. Biomass is burnable organic matter left over from forest product or agricultural industries. Unused tree waste, including sawdust and wood chips, is frequently burned to create steam heat and electricity.
Expanding and retrofitting the city's steam plant is one idea Bergson brought back from a recent trip to Duluth's sister city of Vaxjo, Sweden. There, most of the city's heating needs are covered bybiomass-generated steam, Bergson said.
Mimicking that in Duluth, however, could take time. "This idea is just a baby in its infancy," Bergson said.
But the city also can't ignore the rising costs of fossil fuels or the damage that burning them does to the environment, Bergson said.
Adding a biomass boiler to the steam facility here would cost an estimated $4 million.
Finding that money is one challenge -- but so is finding the fuel to fire it, said Jerry Pelofske, the steam cooperative's general manager.
Taconite plants, paper mills and electrical power providers are all increasingly looking to biomass fuel to avoid the instability of natural gas and fuel oil prices, Pelofske said.
During Bergson's tour Wednesday, Pelofske outlined these and other challenges, mostly economic, posed by a biomass conversion. Over the years, Pelofske has researched a variety of alternative fuel sources and boiler expansions, including biomass. Coal remains the cheapest fuel source by far, he said.
The cost of a biomass plant would be about four times the cost of coal, Pelofske said. Agricultural sources of biomass, such as byproducts of Minnesota's grain and ethanol industries, cost too much to transport north, also making them an economic challenge.
About 6,000 tons of annual grain biomass from Twin Ports grain elevators may be one potential source of fuel -- but it would only provide enough energy for 60 days of steam, Pelofske said.
Those on Bergson's Ecological Industries Task Force said they are looking to pay for a study that will investigate fuel source availability and a long-term cost-benefit analysis, said Dan Green, a task force member and manager of the city's facilities operations.
The task force has started to look for ways to pay for the study's $30,000 to $40,000 estimated cost, Green said.
"It's only a matter of common sense that we are going to end up with more and more of a fuel crisis," said Ralph Loomis, an associate professor of philosophy at the College of St. Scholastica and chairman of the task force.
"Fossil fuels are not sustainable. There's a limited supply. We are eventually going to run out of them and we have to anticipate that."
Bergson's efforts to open a discussion on biomass for Duluth and on sustainable industries in general is a wise move, said Don Arnosti, the forestry director with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Arnosti warned against simply weighing economic benefits against ecological ones. That biomass might cost far more than coal as an energy source should be measured against the additional costs pollution from coal causes in the environment, he said.
Using biomass fuel also might create jobs in the region, he said, ranging from those who collect the materials to those who haul them.
"At what price point do we say those benefits outweigh the price of coal?" Arnosti asked. "It's almost like a political equation. It's not all about economics, it's about social values, too."Duluth News Tribune
