During my four years at Concord High School, I passed this plant on Pleasant St. countless times. It seemed so out of place; with its smokestack spewing who-knows-what into the air, it looked like the poster-child for air pollution and big, scary, environmentally-harmful industry.

But the plant, owned and operated by Concord Steam Corporation, isn’t what it appears. As its name suggests, the company uses the plant to produce steam. That steam is sent through pipes to heat Concord’s business district, state and federal office buildings, Concord Hospital and New Hampshire Hospital. This centralized system is more efficient than those buildings producing their own heat. And Concord Steam practices cogeneration, which means that the steam is used to generate electricity before it leaves the plant.

The fuel of choice for Concord Steam is wood. Specifically, it’s wood from within a thirty-mile radius of Concord. “The wood that we burn is wood that is harvested in the immediate area,” says Peter Bloomfield, president of Concord Steam. “And it comes along with good forestry operation and good forestry practice.” The plant burns branches, treetops, and other non-merchantable wood (that is, wood not useable as lumber). The removal of that wood prevents brushfires and keeps down populations of wood-eating insects. As the Hippo recently reported, the kind of selective, responsible logging that Concord Steam helps support is good for New Hampshire’s forests and wildlife.

Also, the ashes from Concord Steam’s plant are sent to local farms. Spreading wood ash on farmland adds important nutrients to the soil, like phosphorous, potassium, and magnesium, increasing crop production and helping farmers use less chemical fertilizers.

But what about greenhouse gases? Whenever anything containing carbon – plant matter like wood, or coal, or fossil fuels – is burned, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere, which in turn traps heat, causing Global Climate Change. A recent study conducted by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences found that generating electricity by burning wood does initially release more greenhouse gases than burning coal. In the last few weeks, these findings were reported with headlines like ‘Wood Worse Than Coal,’ damaging public opinion of biomass energy and companies like Concord Steam. But according to Bloomfield, and a followup statement by Manomet, it is overly simplistic and misleading to say that burning wood is worse for the environment than burning coal. Most notably, CO2 gets reabsorbed by trees, and the young growth encouraged by responsible wood-harvesting practices absorbs more CO2 than older trees.

“In terms of the environment it’s certainly better than burning fossil fuel,” says Bloomfield. Also, “In terms of employment it’s better than burning fossil fuel.” While most coal comes from out-of-state, and most fossil fuels from overseas, the energy produced by Concord Steam is very local, because the fuel – the wood – is from the immediate area. Every year, that wood replaces 12 million gallons of imported fossil fuels, and puts more than $8 million into New Hampshire’s forest industry.   Concord Steam also spends $200,000 a year on maintenance and repair materials from local companies. And the company pays city taxes. “Money is basically spent in that thirty-mile radius of Concord,” Bloomfield says.

Concord Steam does burn a small amount of fossil fuel, but this is mainly low-sulfur waste oil (oil that has already been used to lubricate machinery), and it is cleaned before being burned. That white plume that’s sometimes visible above the plant’s smokestack is actually steam from the moisture in the burned wood. The gases from the burned oil are cleaned up by pollution control equipment in accordance with the guidelines of the EPA and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, and as a result what does go into the air isn’t visible.

To further reduce their emissions, and to increase their efficiency, Concord Steam has been trying to relocate to a larger site at the Concord Industrial Park on South Main St. The planned facility would be the cleanest wood-fired plant in New Hampshire, with better equipment to monitor emissions. Concord Steam would also take care not to take water from or discharge water into the nearby South-End Marsh, and the plans even include nature trails around the marsh.

Unfortunately, these plans have been delayed as a result of the current economic situation. To finance the new plant, Concord Steam needs all of its electric output to be contracted. With one company having recently backed out, Concord Steam is looking for a utility to contract for the remaining 25% of the plant’s electricity. Once that happens, Bloomfield says, the two-year process of building and relocating can begin.

Wood-fired plants like the one owned by Concord Steam won’t single-handedly end our dependence on fossil fuels; although New Hampshire’s forests could support fifty plants like Concord Steam’s, it still wouldn’t be enough to meet the state’s energy demands. “This is just something that’s going to be a small piece of the puzzle,” says Bloomfield. But Concord Steam is a bigger piece of the puzzle on a local level, by supporting good forestry and the economy, efficiently heating Concord’s businesses, government offices, and hospitals, reusing waste oil, producing an agriculturally-useful byproduct, and controlling emissions. And if it can successfully relocate, expand and improve, it will be a still bigger piece. Says Bloomfield, “That’s the main reason we’re pushing on it so hard.”