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Announcing the Formation of the In early June, a
group of biomass industry leaders began to take the necessary steps
needed to establish the Pennsylvania Biomass Energy Association
(PBEA), an industry-driven nonprofit association. PBEA will
promote sustainable biomass use for heat and power applications and
advocate for state and federal programs to support biomass thermal
and power projects.
The PA Biomass
Working Group and the Fuels for Schools Program have served as
biomass outreach and education programs in Pennsylvania since 2001
and 2005, respectively. Both organizations focused their
efforts on the use of biomass for thermal applications, and to a
lesser extent, power generation. As a result, projects across
the state have shown sustainable biomass can be used in a
cost-effective, environmentally responsible manner to provide heat
in a broad array of applications from residential to community scale
levels. At the same time, the Commonwealth has become home to a
growing number of anaerobic digesters producing on-site electric
generation from biogas. And the state is now witnessing the
development of small scale and company specific biomass combined
heat and power (CHP) projects and distributed generation projects. In 2010, several
PA Biomass Working Group participants began to discuss the need to
reorganize the Working Group into an industry-driven association
that would serve Pennsylvania’s growing biomass heat and power
industry. To meet the continuing need and interests from the
industry, the West Penn Power Sustainable Energy Fund provided
financial and technical support to help create of a formal statewide
association, and has retained PA Energy Resources Group to help plan
and establish the association.
PBEA will center
its activities on three broad focus areas: PBEA is currently seeking to engage industry leaders in this association so that the biomass thermal industry will have a united voice. We encourage you to become a part of this organization and to help make the decisions that will support continued growth in the industry. For more information, and to join PBEA, please contact Melissa Gauthe at (717) 233-8606, ext. 3 or melissa@pa-erg.com. |
