A shift in plans for municipal biomass heat from wood pellets to chips will be a main topic at two informational public meetings next week hosted by the Haines Borough.

Borough consultant Darsie Culbeck and biomass experts from the region will be on hand for meetings set for noon Monday at the assembly chambers and 7 p.m. Thursday at the Haines School library.

A chip-burning boiler system would be first used to heat Haines School and the swimming pool, under Culbeck’s revised scenario. The biomass program is funded by a $1.3 million state grant.

Borough plans for biomass previously centered on wood-pellet systems, but have shifted to chips due to pellet cost and the anticipated difficulty of producing them locally. Biomass advocates also say chips can be produced more cheaply and uniformly than under scenarios previously considered.

“Just because we are doing chips now does not mean that pellets are out of the question forever,” Culbeck said in a recent email. “One of the goals is local production. The current low heating oil prices don’t justify building a pellet mill in Haines. However, a few years from now and the economics could change. The biomass boilers at the school can burn either fuel.”

Former Mayor Stephanie Scott pushed pellet heat after leading a borough effort on energy sustainability when the price of oil neared $150 per barrel. She’s on board with the shift to chips.

“Chips can now be produced that are uniform in size,” Scott said in a recent email. “A low energy solution to drying chips has been developed. The ‘chipper’ itself is just a big diesel-driven machine – no electricity required,” Scott said.

“No infrastructure required, except, I suppose, a garage large enough to house for repair. Locally, we clearly have the expertise to run such a machine and machine shops that can service it,” she said.

Lynn Canal Conservation president Eric Holle said his group supports wood chips over pellets – because they require less energy to produce – but combustion heat sources are “unfortunate” compared to sources like heat pumps.

“The big question is the scale of the operation and what the source of wood chips is going to be. If it’s primarily waste wood from pre-commercial thinning on second-growth (trees), we wouldn’t have a huge objection. But if it’s going to be cutting down old growth to heat big buildings, we’d probably be not too supportive,” Holle said.

Early estimates put heating the school and swimming pool with chips at requiring three to 10 acres of clearcuts per year. That’s “pretty small potatoes,” Holle said. “If they’re planning on heating all the (public) buildings in Haines (with chips), then you start getting into total acreage that would be a concern for us.”

Holle acknowledged that heat-exchange systems (like ground-temperature and seawater-sourced ones used privately in Haines) may not be economical on a large scale, due to cost of electricity here. “You definitely need a reliable and somewhat economic source of electricity to do that. Maybe it’s not practical in Haines. If you accept the fact the planet’s heating up, hydro (electric) plus heat-exchange (systems) would be a better source.”

Public facilities director Brad Ryan said this week that the switch to chips won’t happen right away. A pellet-heat pilot program at the borough Senior Center will continue.

“We will still be using pellets for a while. While the ultimate goal is wood chips, the new boilers are currently set up for pellets and would remain that way until we get them set up and the kinks worked out before moving to chips,” Ryan said.

There’s no plan to convert the center’s pellet boiler chips unless the current boiler can provide sufficient demand for a planned addition to the building and that wouldn’t be until the fall of 2017, Ryan said.

  “Ultimately, if we get the chips working in the new boilers it would be ideal to convert the Senior Center,” Ryan said.

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