TurboTime Podcast: Biomass Power Plants with IHI Power Services

In this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Chris Quijano, the Director of Operations at IHI Power Services, discusses the state of the biomass industry, the challenges of working with biomass, and where the industry is headed.

Quijano breaks down the woody biomass industry in California: “California has the majority of the woody biomass power plants in the nation; currently, there are 23 operational biomass power plants in the state. This industry has been around since the 80s, and there are three different types of woody biomass that we use at the plants. Urban material is your green garbage cans and branches that tree services remove. Agricultural material comes from the orchards in the Central Valley—those orchards only produce fruit for so many years and they have to knock them down. That material can be used at biomass plants to make energy. And then there is forest material—when I say forest we aren't going out there and cutting down healthy trees just to make power. This is a low-value material that has no other real use. For example, a sawmill company comes in and takes down a number of trees and the merchantable lumber out of that, then we get the flash, i.e., the smaller tree limbs, the smaller branches, the material that they don’t use and has no other use. We are not taking healthy wood and putting it into our boilers to make power. It doesn't make sense financially. This material can sit in a dump or a landfill somewhere, or they open burn it, which releases emissions, or it’s left in the forest to rot, which also releases greenhouse gases and isn’t healthy for the forests.”