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Running's employer is seeking an air-quality permit to crank up a gasifier, which transforms chips into fuel that would replace natural gas in heating the Missoula campus. Environmental groups have appealed a decision by the local health department to grant the permit, but backers see it as green energy and a safety measure.
"We sit surrounded by forests in a way Salt Lake doesn't," Running said. "We've had holocaust-level fires where people got burned up."
Nearby, Darby, Mont., is burning wood chips for school heat, using trees that in another era would have gone to a sawmill or a Missoula-area paperboard mill. Ely, Nev., also has a school participating in "Fuels for Schools," a project land managers hope will catch on in the rural West.
Other opportunities exist for markets that require a component of renewable energy. The Intermountain Power Project plant at Delta has studied adding biomass to its coal feedstock because it supplies power to California, a state that mandates green energy.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert's administration has adopted an energy plan that looks to a future of renewables, including biomass. It touts university research collaboration but doesn't deal tax breaks to companies.
"There's not really any incentives - government incentives - to do it in Utah," Page said.
But there is a tremendous supply. The Beehive State boasts 10 million acres of pinyon-juniper forests.
bloomis@sltrib.com
Twitter: @brandonloomis
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