University of Oregon guidebook touts use of wood boilers

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Oct 29, 2008 by Report

A new guidebook produced by the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon promotes the use of wood to heat large buildings amid skyrocketing prices of fossil fuels.

The guidebook, "Wood Heat Solutions: A Community Guide to Biomass Thermal Projects," was produced by Resource Innovations, a program within the ISE. According to the book, woody biomass is a renewable resource in that it is carbon-neutral and available locally. When wood is converted into wood chips or pellets and burned in a boiler, the book says that it can be economically beneficial for heating. The book also cites wildfire risk reduction, cost savings and low emissions as benefits of heating with wood.

Enterprise High School in Wallowa County recently became the first school in the state in over 50 years to use wood heating, and reported savings of $112,000 from replacing an oil boiler with a woodchip boiler. Similarly, the Harney County District Hospital in Burns has saved $50,000 in the last year by using a wood-pellet boiler.

The guidebook and an accompanying video, "Keeping Energy Dollars Local," are available at http://ri.uoregon.edu.