CHE 598: Opportunities And Challenges To Large-Scale Production Of Woody Biomass For Bioenergy, Biofuels And Advanced Bioproducts
About the event
SPEAKER: Dr. Austin Himes, Assistant Professor, School of the Environment, WSU
BIOGRAPHY:
Austin Himes is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at Washington State University. Prior to his academic career he worked for GreenWood Resources, Inc., a Timber Investment Management Organization (TIMO), where he conducted applied forestry research, managed hybrid-poplar plantations and work on forest sustainability projects. His research interests are interdisciplinary and revolve around silviculture and management of forests for multiple ecosystem services. He has authored peer reviewed articles on a diverse range of topics including trade-offs between ecosystem services in plantation forests, the carbon benefits of building with wood, short rotation woody crop systems and the different ways that people value ecosystem services. He was also a contributing author for the recently released Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Values Assessment, he is a SAF Certified Forester, a Registered Forester with the state of Mississippi, and has been a Forest Stewards Guild member since 2017. Austin received his PhD in Forest Ecosystems and Society from Oregon State University in 2019 and holds a M.S. from the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. He is a Society of American Foresters Certified Forester and a Registered Forester in the state of Mississippi.
ABSTRACT:
It is likely not an exaggeration to say that there have been hundreds of thousands of pages written over the last half-century on cropping systems dedicated to the production of woody biomass for bioenergy, and a comparable volume of research has been published on biomass supply-chains, processes of converting biomass to fuels, and the economics of bioenergy. Despite all this research, arguably the only approach implemented at a scale meaningful for mitigating global climate change is hardly different from pre-historic human’s burning wood for heat. So, what will it take for advanced woody biomass for biofuel and bioproducts production to become commercially viable and widespread? I don’t know, but in this seminar, I will convey my thoughts about opportunities and challenges based on more than a decade of work in biomass production research and operations. I will share some results from two $40 million USDA sponsored project to use forest residual biomass and dedicated hybrid poplar biomass plantations as feedstock for biochemical conversion processes to liquid fuels in the Pacific Northwest, some lessons learned from operational experience and research with dedicated and intercropped biomass production systems, and new research on increasing yield and ecosystem service benefits from dedicated biomass crops. Based on this research and experience I suggest some key challenges to future growth and adoption of biomass-based bioenergy and a few areas where I think opportunities exist to make the leap from research to meaningful application.