The Obama Administration and Congress’s historic focus on energy and climate change have introduced significant regulatory uncertainty in generation planning and operations. Biomass co-firing technology can provide a path to addressing climate change while mitigating costs to the nation’s coal-generation base and the customers served.

While biomass co-firing technology has been demonstrated in many boiler types, the US currently does not use this approach due to a lack of incentives and a general reluctance to introduce new fuels into boilers. However, as the US government continues to actively pursue carbon and other environmental policies and regulations, co-generation from biomass, waste, and recovered fuels is beginning to be evaluated for use in US power generation assets.

KEMA has been actively engaged in supporting biomass co-firing initiatives already underway in Europe and the Netherlands for over a decade. Full scale commercial co-firing of at least ten percent biomass – based on heat input – is a daily practice there, with a wide variety of bio-fuels and co-firing configurations.

In North America, KEMA has been working with a number of utilities to determine short-term strategies for introducing biomass into existing coal-fired units. The firm is also helping utilities develop long-term strategies to ensure that they are prepared for likely upcoming regional or national carbon dioxide reduction regulations.

A recently issued KEMA whitepaper, “Co-firing biomass with coal: Balancing US carbon objectives, energy demand and electricity affordability” provides insight into the technical, economic, and regulatory and environmental conditions to consider for implementing biomass co-firing.

The paper is available for download at: www.kema.com/biomass-energy.