Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to better reflect one of the public commenter’s background.
UPPERLAKE >> Scotts Valley Energy Corporation returned to the Western Region Town Hall September 18 with another case for biochar, a zero-emissions electricity source, seeking council encouragement and while generally enthusiastic the council conveyed some skepticism.
The Scott’s Valley Band of Pomo Indians wholly own the Scott’s Valley Energy Corporation and is represented by Tom Jordan, who is also proprietor of Jordan Vineyards and Winery. Collaborating with Steve Rumbaugh, president of Woodbridge Energy LLC of Martinez, the two alternated presentations of biochar benefits.
Rumbaugh explained they take chipped wood and create clean power. “There’s no burning, material is put in an oxygen starved chamber; and heated by a process, of gasification,” he said. It is a process that converts biomass- into gases, including hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. “We do the process in a sealed chamber, heated to 600 degrees,” he explained. “One of the by-products is biochar; powers a generator to produce electricity. They take in material and process it in a linear generator.”
The linear generator can quickly switch between different types of green fuel. It has the potential to make the decarbonized power system available, and resilient against vagaries of weather or fuel supplies. It’s known that engineers could trigger the release of energy simply by compressing a mixture of air and fuel that enters a closed chamber with movable end walls.
The end walls move toward each other, compressing a mixture of fuel and air. The mixture collides faster, until molecules break apart and re-form into different molecules, releasing the energy stored in chemical bonds. That energy causes new molecules to collide even faster, not just with themselves but also with the chamber walls, raising chamber pressure. It happens without a spark or any other ignition source. Pressure pushes the walls of the sealed chamber outward with more force than that needed to push them inward at the beginning of the cycle. Once these walls reach their initial position, and the pressure within the chamber reverts to its initial state, a new batch of fuel and air flows in, pushing the molecules created by the previous cycle out of the chamber and starting the process over, according to a Stanford University Advanced Energy Systems Laboratory online report.
The goal is to put a plant in a one-acre parcel 1,300 feet from HWY 20, near Running Creek Casino. A future plant would run eight hours a day, five days a week. But Council Member Claudine Pedroncelli raised a concern of dangerous traffic flows in the area. “What would happen if you had a malfunction, at night, who would be the responsible party?” Rumbaugh explained a plant would be monitored by a centralized dispatcher who could switch off power.
Tom Jordan noted they received a Major Use Permit 18 months ago and completed a California Environmental Quality Act requirement, yet there are some mitigations needed before going before the planning commission. He also explained in 1934 the federal government passed the Indian Re-organization Act. “In accordance with the Act, under Section 17, if you create a corporation under that section, you do not pay federal income tax. “We’re hoping to be operational in a year,” he added.
Yet audience public commentator Julia Carrera, who helmed Julia Carrera & Associates, an environmental compliance company until she retired and closed the business late last year, cited previous testimony that source material for biochar will be harvested from Humboldt County forests driving over forest roads. “They cannot handle such heavy loads so, have you considered this in your project plan?” She made the point that timber has its own laws, separate from agricultural laws and falls under the State Department of Forestry, not the State Dept. of agriculture. She also pointed out Scotts Valley Energy operations are likely to require a change in the flood zones in Upper Lake within 10 years.
“This timber biomass they are proposing to work with, is not an agricultural Product, it is a timber product. This project should not be located on prime Ag Land zoning in an existing flood zone recognized by the federal government – not yet formally because the feds take approximately 10 years to update flood maps, this process just started. The timber wood chips and waddles surrounding the piles of woodchips will clog up the flood drainage system keeping Upper Lake underwater far longer than needed, which is eminent,” she noted.
She went on to state that she is grateful the project will offer 10 local jobs, and she thinks the low-impact electricity production is a phenomenal idea, but plant location is not a good idea.
Another public commenter, Barbara Morris, recalled the aforementioned one truckload of biochar per week. “So, you plan to distribute electricity?” Rumbaugh answered, “Not at this site but the Red Hill plant, (near Kit Corner). “Carbon Capture is about three times its weight in CO2,” he said. “We trade in electricity, as well as producing power.” Jordan noted they have prospects, willing to pay $200 a ton for biochar. “We got three times the value in carbon credits, $600/ton,” he said. “And we think that’s fairly profitable.” What carbon capture and storage is; it’s capturing CO2 that otherwise would be released into the atmosphere and injecting it deep underground for safe and permanent storage.
But Morris also pointed out the site is a corridor for deer, racoon and opossum and even with diversion structures to divert them would be disruptive to wildlife.
