Campuses:
By Sara Specht
The conversation has been going in circles for years. That discussion about putting the great idea of bioenergy into action on a large scale in the real world—the one that inevitably ends up at, “yes, but....”
Fill in the blank.
Yes, but how do you grow enough feedstock to power a plant? Okay, but how do you move the fuel from farm to facility without harming the environment? Fine, but how do you make it financially viable?
How do you make it work?
The large, interdisciplinary team behind a five-year grant from Xcel Energy figured they might find the answers to that big question by bringing all the stakeholders together to assemble a picture of an entire working bioenergy system, from planning through infrastructure to implementation. Building on a wealth of related research, 11 scientists from six CFANS departments have partnered on the project with Rural Advantage and the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP), the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Koda Energy.
The aim of the study is to address the challenges facing biomass energy across all levels of the system. They will identify not only the type of feedstocks to farm, but where to plant, how to harvest and how big an area to convert from traditional cropping systems to be lucrative for both farmer and power plant. They will quantify the environmental implications of the change to the Minnesota River basin landscape. And when a system is devised to transport the feedstock, Koda Energy, a partnership between Rahr Malting Co. and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community that houses a biomass power plant, will provide a real world example for renewable energy production.
“What really makes this project unique is that it’s fully integrated,” says Todd Arnold, a professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. “We’re harvesting biomass, and Koda Energy will use it. It’s not hypothetical—it’s integrating industry, research and landowners across the board. It’s happening.”
Koda Energy’s biomass conversion facility is located in Shakopee at the Rahr Malting complex, which overlooks the Minnesota River. Another partner, Rural Advantage, is exploring the possibility of building a bioenergy plant in Madelia, in the Blue Earth river basin. The research team is exploring how big the surrounding fuelsheds would have to be to supply the facilities with enough biomass, and what the most beneficial combination of perennial feedstocks might be.
“What we’ve got right now in southwestern Minnesota are corn and soybeans, and those are valuable crops that we need as a food source,” says Dean Current (’85–M.S., forestry; ’97–M.A., anthropology; ’00–Ph.D., forestry) of the Department of Forest Resources, the principal investigator of the Xcel project. “But there are a lot of more environmentally sensitive areas near streams or on slopes that are not very productive for some of the more traditional crops. Our focus is on keeping lands productive and lucrative, so these are the areas that farmers would likely convert to perennial bioenergy crops. It can be a win-win situation.”
A combination of potential feedstocks ranging from switchgrass and mixed prairie grasses to fast-growing woody perennials is being tested both at research plots at the Southern Research and Outreach Center in Waseca and on participating landowners’ properties within the fuelsheds. The team has found that their efforts need to extend beyond establishing crop yield and optimal planting location. While there exists voluminous research on cultivating food crops, there is relatively little on these plants as crops. When should fields be planted; when should they be harvested? Can ash from the facility be recycled back onto the fields as fertilizer? Once basic management practices are better understood, Current says, hopefully productivity and cost effectiveness will follow.
“We’re trying to get down to the nitty gritty of what to plant and where and how—what this new agricultural landscape could look like so that everyone gets what they want from it,” says Nick Jordan, a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics. “Then we can start the flow from crops to energy to make a fundamental change in how we plan agricultural lands.”
As a consequence of the success of profitable corn and soybean production on agricultural lands, the southern Minnesota watersheds have lost much of their biodiversity and perennial ground cover. One point of environmental concern in the Xcel project is to design feedstock cropping systems that alleviate the flow of sediment and nutrients into the rivers.
“If you look at satellite imagery of the upper Midwest in the spring after the snow melts in April, much of the landscape is all brown and subject to runoff until well into June when annual crops start to grow,” says Ken Brooks, a professor in the Department of Forest Resources. “Realistically we need to figure out how to get some of these perennial crops and wetlands back on the landscape to capture and treat the runoff before it gets into the stream channel.”
It’s easy to say from a scientific standpoint that there should be more green crops on the ground to improve water quality, Brooks says, but the challenge is to determine the hydrologic benefits that come from more diversified perennial cropping systems. Monitoring nutrient flow and water quality coming off of small watersheds, they are trying to quantify the relative benefits that can be achieved and at what scale. If they discover, for example, that in order to make a measurable impact on water quality half of the watershed would have to be converted to perennial feedstocks, then that obviously won’t be practical, he says. So what other environmental benefits can alternative cropping systems reap?
One such potential benefit to reintroducing diversity to the agricultural landscape is increased wildlife habitat. Grassland songbirds in particular have declined more than any other group of birds in North America, and they serve as a good indicator species for whether the new cropping systems would provide a stable habitat, Arnold says. Tracking key grassland bird populations through harvests year after year will predict whether they can sustain new, productive habitats for wildlife.
“Compared to water quality, wildlife benefits are just nice little trinkets in this project,” says Arnold. “But I think about a species like the Western Meadowlark that has declined at a catastrophic rate of 7 percent per year. There used to be meadowlarks perched on telephone and fence lines every half mile. My vision for the future includes a productive landscape, but it’s also one where we can hear meadowlarks singing again.”
Once the fuelshed is populated with perennial feedstocks and crops have been harvested, there must be an infrastructure in place to move them to the facility, to load, unload, store and process them. The challenge is how to develop policy and incentives to support innovation in how farmers use the land, says Jordan. The team will determine what kind of service providers could be established to keep energy costs low and create a competitive economic model for renewable energy.
Those logistics of moving and processing biomass is a piece of the puzzle that hasn’t received as much attention as feedstock crop cultivation. That is where Koda Energy, a private sector partner with an operating bioenergy facility, gives this project a unique advantage, says Current. With a functioning demand for biofuels, they can determine real market values for energy biomass.
“And that’s the key to the whole project—getting farmers to buy in,” says Current. “If we want them to adopt new biomass cropping systems, we need to make it economically beneficial. Maybe there are opportunities for carbon credits or payments for environmental services. How do we balance the risk to make it work for them?”
According to Linda Meschke (’76–A.S., animal science, poultry science), president of Rural Advantage, support from farmers is there for sustainable alternative cropping systems that diversify their landscape. Meschke’s ties to the farming community helped bring neighbors and local landowners into the project, providing research plots and survey participants. She hopes the project can come up with workable alternatives her community can adopt to improve their environment while producing the food and feed the nation needs.
“If we can create a system that works, it’s going to be great.” Current says. “It’s a challenge, but we feel that you’ve got to really look at the whole picture to make something big happen.”
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Linda Meschke Rural Advantage |
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| Todd Arnold Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology |
Carl Rosen Soil, Water, and Climate |
Jim Kleinschmit Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy |
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| Ken Brooks Forest Resources |
Craig Sheaffer Agronomy and Plant Genetics |
Tim Bremicker Minnesota Department of Natural Resources |
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| Dean Current Forest Resources / CINRAM |
Sangwon Suh Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering |
Mark Lindquist Minnesota Department of Natural Resources |
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| K.W. Easter Applied Economics |
Bruce Wilson Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering |
Paul Kramer Koda Energy |
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| Nick Jordan Agronomy and Plant Genetics |
Donald Wyse Agronomy and Plant Genetics |
Jesse Theiss Koda Energy |
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| John Nieber Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering |
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