Novel Design for Biomass Renewable Energy Community Education Site

The United States continues to experience the impacts of climate change, with worsening droughts, extreme weather events, wildfires, and excess tree mortality, along with reductions in the reliability and safety of the utility grid, evidenced by rolling blackouts and wildfires caused by aging and climate-stressed grid infrastructure. A novel biomass gasification distributed energy resource system is being developed for microgrids as a drop-in replacement for the backup power and baseload typically provided by diesel gensets. This mobile, containerized unit converts locally-sourced woody biomass into electricity, heat, and biochar in community-scale projects. Biochar is a carbon-rich, charcoal-like co-product of the gasification process and is a highly beneficial soil amendment that increases plant yields and soil health and remediates contaminated soil. A related social impact enterprise creates profitable and scalable community-scale carbon sequestration—with local economic and socio-environmental benefits—by disseminating the biomass gasification system’s biochar product to local residents and agriculture. For this Phase I project, the team will develop a design package to deploy a pilot biomass gasification system as part of a zero-carbon microgrid in Yonkers, New York, and integrate it into the community with a group of partners that engages local green waste sources and community gardens and local food-related organizations and businesses for biochar distribution and utilization. The team will design education and outreach initiatives around the biomass gasification system and will engage with local schools and organizations to deploy biochar. Local stakeholders will be engaged to help develop and assess the design package in the community’s context and as a replicable model that provides economic, climate, environmental, and social benefits. The combination of the innovative biomass gasification technology and a standardized community-based deployment model will enable replication in other communities in Phase II and III activities.