Ought to pinyon-juniper forests be was biofuel?

When Varlin Higbee eyes the scrubby forest of pinyon pines and juniper timber that fill the excessive desert outdoors this outdated Union Pacific Railroad city, there’s only one thought that crosses his thoughts:

“They’re only a wildfire ready to occur,” the Lincoln County commissioner says of the low, bushy timber.

And Higbee isn’t alone in his distaste for the crops.

Regardless of the various makes use of Native Individuals as soon as had for pinyon-juniper woodlands — not the least of which was sustenance from pine nuts — ranchers and federal land managers all through the American Southwest have now come to treat them as a extremely flammable and invasive scourge.

In components of California and far of the Nice Basin, land homeowners have declared warfare on pinyon pines and juniper timber, clearing them from rangelands with chains, bulldozers, saws and herbicides. On the similar time, the timber are drawing rising curiosity as a supply of renewable vitality — corresponding to in California’s Lassen County, the place 150,000 tons of the timber are fed into the Honey Lake Energy Plant annually to generate vitality for purchasers together with San Diego Gasoline & Electrical.

Most lately, Higbee and different Nevada officers have proposed changing them into inexperienced methanol — a biofuel that might be used for all the pieces from producing electrical energy to powering cargo ships calling on the ports of Los Angeles and Lengthy Seaside.

In January, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a declaration of understanding with Denmark to develop an industrial park in Lincoln County the place methanol can be extracted from wooden and used as a gasoline additive to cut back greenhouse gasoline emissions from diesel engines.

To listen to Lombardo inform it, it’s a match made in heaven.

“This modern and collaborative know-how challenge produces clear renewable vitality, whereas concurrently using timber that have to be thinned out to take care of a wholesome forest,” Lombardo stated.

Environmental teams, nonetheless, have blasted the plan. Amongst different criticisms, they are saying the cope with Denmark units the stage for a battle over the way forward for an ecologically wealthy panorama, a lot of which has remained untouched by the glitz and bustle of Las Vegas and Reno.

Gary Hughes of Biofuelwatch, an advocacy group centered on the influence of bioenergy growth, dismissed the proposal as “a technological useless finish street and heartbreaking waste of wholesome timber.”

A Maersk line container ship from Denmark awaits unloading on the Port of Los Angeles. Denmark is seeking to the state of Nevada to transform pinyon pine and juniper timber into biofuel that might be used to energy cargo ships.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)

Denmark — which is residence to Maersk, the world’s largest container delivery firm — has pledged to turn into 100% fossil gasoline free by 2050, and bioenergy is a key a part of that formidable effort.

“Denmark is on the forefront of renewable vitality developments and nearer collaboration between Nevada and Denmark can solely strengthen our joint quests to create financial development and well-paid jobs — whereas additionally doing good for the surroundings and our planet,” learn an announcement from Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen.

Nevada officers need to find the power in the course of about 1.3 million acres of pinyon-juniper woodlands in public lands some 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The proposed web site can also be crossed by a Union Pacific mainline that terminates on the ports of Los Angeles and Lengthy Seaside.

The ability, in response to officers, might appeal to $260 million in investments, create 150 sorely wanted native jobs and turn into a mannequin for creating comparable industrial parks in different components of Nevada.

However there are important environmental points concerned in scalping jap Nevada’s mountainous public lands of century-old timber standing 15 to twenty ft tall.

“I’d be stunned if this proposal is profitable,” Hughes stated. “To this point, efforts to provide methanol from wooden at scale for the aviation trade, for instance, have all failed.”

Patrick Donnelly, Nice Basin director for the Middle for Organic Variety, known as it a brand new chapter in “our nation’s 200-year-long warfare on pinyon-juniper ecosystems.”

“Every technology finds a brand new excuse to justify their destruction as a result of they don’t present the financial advantages obtained from tall pine timber favored by the timber trade,” he stated.

“Now, it appears the state of Nevada is popping champagne corks as a result of it believes it has discovered a method of earning money from the timber,” Donnelly stated. “However I see it as a short-term carbon profit on the expense of the long-term carbon sequestration advantages offered by a wholesome forest.”

The event of renewable vitality amenities — photo voltaic, wind, geothermal and biomass — on public lands has been a prime precedence of the federal authorities because it seeks to ease the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and curb international warming.

With that objective in thoughts, the Bureau of Land Administration is working intently in Lincoln County with the governor’s financial growth workplace, engineers in Denmark, and Sixco Nevada Inc. — a consortium of corporations centered on deployment of latest applied sciences — to develop the proposal.

Within the eyes of the BLM, pinyon pine and juniper timber are weedy species that invade sagebrush rangelands and enhance the danger of wildfire. They are saying an overabundance of pinyon-juniper woodlands fueled the 2022 Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fireplace in New Mexico, which burned 341,735 acres, a state document.

However environmentalists argue that the lack of the timber outweighs the advantages of biofuel and biomass manufacturing.

Pinyon-juniper woodlands soak up atmospheric carbon by the method of photosynthesis, and have been widespread for 1000’s of years in a lot of Nevada and Utah, in addition to parts of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming and Baja California. Critics of the biofuel challenge say the woodlands’ position in carbon storage is crucial to battling local weather change.

Environmentalists additionally fear that the loss and degradation of pinyon-juniper woodlands will pose a big risk to quite a few animal species, together with the intense blue pinyon jay, which is into consideration for itemizing as a federally endangered species.

Lincoln County Commissioner Varlin Higbee, middle, walks with Derick Hembd, proper, president of Sixco Nevada, a consortium of corporations centered on infrastructure, and Invoice Vinnicombet, a Sixco Nevada vitality finance advisor, on the proposed web site of the tree harvesting and biofuel manufacturing challenge northeast of Las Vegas.

(Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Occasions)

The Western Watershed Undertaking and Middle for Organic Variety have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Courtroom difficult the BLM’s approval of a plan to take away pinyon-juniper forests throughout greater than 380,000 acres of sagebrush shrublands on federal land in jap Nevada.

The lawsuit claims the plan would eradicate habitat for imperiled sage grouse and pinyon jays with strategies together with “chaining” — the dragging of an anchor chain from a U.S. Navy vessel between two bulldozers to be able to uproot and crush pinyon-juniper forests and sagebrush.

Derick Hembd, president of Sixco Nevada, stated the governor’s proposal requires utilizing shears and saws to reap particular person timber, leaving saplings and sagebrush untouched.

It stays to be seen, nonetheless, whether or not considerations over the way forward for pinyon jays and different creatures threaten to stall or derail the challenge in rural Lincoln County, which is greatest often known as a gateway to the secretive Space 51 U.S. Air Drive navy set up.

However Higbee, 63, has excessive hopes for the proposal that might additionally breathe new life into struggling rural communities corresponding to Caliente, the place the inhabitants of about 1,100 individuals hasn’t budged in many years.

“We have to develop,” Higbee stated with frustration. “I’m going to do all the pieces in my energy to get this challenge up and working.”