Crops Make Biomass

Crops

While displacing relatively small percentages of fossil fuel use with biomass energy crops may not sound like much, it is very significant when recognizing the tremendous size of electricity generation facilities.

For example, co-firing energy crops at just one medium size power plant would be the equivalent of installing over 41,000 large solar panels or in reducing CO2 emission levels, by removing approximately 17,000 cars off the road.

Instead of building new power generating facilities, which would ultimately result in higher costs to the consumer, we are working with scientists and engineers to change the fuel blend. It’s a novel approach to creating Renewable Energy, and if it works, there’s potential for immediate commercial use by electric utilities offering their customers a low cost option to purchase "Green Energy".

Biomass Crops Process

In biomass co-firing, there are three primary approaches to biomass fuel delivery into the existing power plant: Solid Fuel Blending; Solid Fuel Direct Injection; and External Gasification.

Production Tax Credit (PTC): Section 45 of the Internal Revenue Code provides a tax credit of up to ~2¢ per kWh for electricity generation from biomass feedstock. It must be noted however that since the PTC is a direct dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxes (versus a deduction to taxable income) the tax credit's value must be adjusted to reflect its true economic value (e.g., dividing 2¢ by 1 minus the corporate tax rate of 35%). Thus, the true production cost value of the PTC is up to ~3¢ per kWh. Making this "gross-up" in the PTC stated value is extremely important in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison of the production cost (per MMBtu, kWh) of biomass energy versus other fuel options (oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear).