South Carolina

Co-firing forest biomass with coal is one way to utilize the resource without building new infrastructure. In South Carolina, power company Santee-Cooper is doing just that. Santee-Cooper announced in August 2005 that they would spend several million dollars to retrofit a coal burning plant to also burn wood chips (Stock 2005). The facility will use forest biomass from thinnings of the Francis Marion National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service has begun a massive project to thin young, dense stands in the forest that have sprouted since Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The trees to be removed have made the forest cover too dense for endangered species such as red-cockaded woodpeckers, and also pose a severe wildfire threat. The trees are also too small for the pulpwood and lumber markets. Using this material from thinnings will offset the thinning cost for the Forest Service and will also allow Santee-Cooper to reduce electricity generation costs. The amount of pollution released will also be less than that emitted by a coal-fired plant.