Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting the use of biomass to produce energy, and landowners across the nation can benefit from it through funding to help produce or transport biomass for energy.
- Through the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, financial aid is available to create new crops of energy biomass, and also for those who harvest or transport forest or agricultural waste to a biomass facility.
- Through BCAP funding, landowners can benefit from removing diseased trees from their land. The program also provides aid to landowners in some areas who grow biomass crops.
Dive Insight:
New technologies, and emerging technologies like biomass WTE plants, sometimes need encouragement from the government to become widespread. Agricultural and forest waste, even if it is diseased timber, is still a usable resource.
But patterns of behavior sometimes must be changed for people to fully adopt ideas like agricultural waste diversion, or even single-stream recycling. The USDA’s Biomass Crop Assistance Program, while practically a drop in the federal government budget at $11.5 million, nonetheless encourages the use of forest waste like deadwood and that’s a good thing.
The program also provides a valuable reminder to landowners that allowing unused forest and agricultural waste could be a lucrative opportunity.
