Biomass Feasibility Project Final Report - Xcel Energy

Aspen 8
• Material Characteristics
o (Gaur and Reed, 1998)
Brushland
• Inventory/Availability
o ("Brushland: Acres by County", 2000)
CRP Trees 9
• Inventory/Availability
o (USDA, 2006)
Urban Wood
• Inventory/Availability
o (Perlack, et. al., 2005)
Mill Residues (Barks, Slabs, and Edgings)
• Material Characteristics
o Assumed to be the same as Logging Residues
• Inventory/Availability
o Inventory from primary sources
o (Jacobson, 2007)
Mill Residues (Sawdust)
• Material Characteristics
o Assumed to be the same as Logging Residues
• Inventory/Availability
o Inventory from primary sources
o (Jacobson, 2007)
MANURES
Major Sources
• Material Characteristics
o (MWPS, 2004)
• Inventory/Availability
8 Minnesota forest production is estimated periodically (annually, starting in 2004) by the US Forest Service and reported
in the Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) database (U.S. Forest Service, n.d.). Data is reported for each tree species in each
county, but these local estimated means are associated with extremely wide variance, made explicit by the Forest
Service. After consulting with the maintainers of the FIA database, we decided to use for present purposes the county
mean acreage for the three species groupings: softwoods, aspen, and hardwoods-not-aspen. These acreage numbers
were used along with multi-county (we used the four Minnesota FS analysis region boundaries for this assignment) annual
increment (“growing biomass”) estimates to calculate an annual green-tons growth estimate for the three groupings in
each county. To convert these to dry tons per year, we used average moisture content estimates.
9 Ibid.
Identifying Effective Biomass Strategies: Page D-7
Quantifying Minnesota’s Resources and Evaluating Future Opportunities