Arizona's second and largest biomass plant began providing electricity to 9,000 homes last week, generating electricity with material from forest-thinning efforts in the White Mountains and unusable, recycled paper fibers from a nearby paper mill. Officials say the plant will provide a stable source of electricity for communities that were dependent on power lines that are often compromised during Arizona's active wildfire season.

The U.S. Endowment today released its fifth request for pre-proposal (RFP). "This effort to assess 'The State of Wood-based Bio-energy/Bio-fuels Technologies and Industries in North America' (PDF) expands our reach both programmatically and geographically," said Endowment President Carlton Owen. Products from the work will include a "state of the field" in terms of commercial applications of technologies on one hand and a real-time system to track the use of woody biomass as an energy raw material on the other.

Alabama is estimated to have woody biomass equivalent to 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil, Auburn says. Counting just the residue from commercial logging and other activities, the state produces about 4 million dry tons a year, which equals about 10 percent of the nation's annual gasoline usage.