Stakeholder Assessment of the Feasibility of Poplar as a Biomass Feedstock and Ecosystem Services Provider in Southwestern Washington, USA

Abstract

Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest (AHB), a USDA NIFA-funded consortium of university and industry partners, identified southwestern Washington as a potential location for a regional bioproducts industry using poplar trees (Populus spp.) as the feedstock. In this qualitative case study, we present the results of an exploratory feasibility investigation based on conversations with agricultural and natural resources stakeholders. This research complements a techno-economic modelling of a hypothetical biorefinery near Centralia, WA, USA. Interviews and group discussions explored the feasibility of a poplar-based bioproducts industry in southwestern WA, especially as it relates to converting land to poplar farms and the potential for poplar to provide ecosystem services. Stakeholders revealed challenges to local agriculture, past failures to profit from poplar (for pulp/sawlogs), land-use planning efforts for flood mitigation and salmon conservation, questions about biorefinery operations, and a need for a new economic opportunity that “pencils out”. Overall, if the business model is convincing, participants see chances for win-win situations where landowners could profit growing poplar on otherwise low-value acreage and achieve ecosystem services for wastewater or floodplain management.

Roadside vegetated filter strips to simultaneously lower stormwater pollution loadings and improve economics of biorefinery feedstocks

“…A theoretical biorefinery location in Centralia, Washington, USA (46.7162° N, 122.9543° W) was used for mapping analysis. This location meets previously described economic guidelines for an ideal biorefinery sites (Bandaru, et al, 2015) due to low land costs and the location's need for an industry to improve a localized depressed economy (Chowyuk, et al, 2021;Hart, et al, 2018).…”

Reviewing the interface of bioeconomy and ecosystem service research

“…Such estimates entail implications in regional planning in terms of ecosystem services-related sustainability issues. Häyrinen et al ( 2017 ) and Tyndall et al ( 2011 ), Hand and Tyndall (2018), and Hart et al ( 2018 ) investigated agricultural and forest stakeholder opinions on the feasibility and potential avenues of the bioeconomy in natural resource management and use. Jensen et al ( 2012 ) highlighted the potential of legumes in the development of agrosystems to reconcile biomass needs and ecosystem services maintenance, especially in regard to climate change mitigation under a bioeconomy.…”

Continuous Living Cover: Adaptive Strategies for Putting Regenerative Agriculture into Practice

“…These factors include technoeconomic limitations of biofuel industrial processes (Padella et al, 2019), costly supply chain management particularly high handling and transportation costs (Yang et al, 2022), inadequate national and state policy linkages (Miao and Khanna, 2017;McCarty and Sesmero, 2021), and limited landowner and farmer buy-in. Landowners struggle with the legacy of failure regarding bioenergy emergence and continue to question the lack of market development and infrastructure in their regions (Hart et al, 2018). There are additional pragmatic questions regarding the availability of on-farm equipment, compatibility of biomass production to primary cropping systems, land tenure constraints, and available technical support (Khanna et al, 2021).…”