Tree power may be the future

COULD wood manufacturers soon become electricity producers? That is the question being asked by a recent study.

Texas A&M University has studied the practices of Scandinavian manufacturers, who gather up what is left after trees are felled to use as a bio-fuel.

Although using the waste produced from within the factory to power other parts of the plant is common, gathering the wood that is left behind is not often undertaken.

Dr. Darwin Foster, a US forestry specialist, said: “In Sweden, they're already bundling up what we're leaving in the forest after a timber harvest and using it as bio-fuel.

"Bio-fuel is an all-inclusive term that includes any renewable resource used to generate energy. As with ethanol distilled from small grains by-products and methane from animal-waste, wood refuse is another renewable energy source.

“The key word is ‘renewable’ because compared to fossil fuels that takes hundreds of millennia to create and is not renewable.”

But the use of forest bio-fuel is not limited to energy production in forest industry plants.

With prices of natural gas, crude oil and other non-renewable sources rising, scientists are looking at using bio-fuels for residential consumption, Dr. Foster said.