MSU Receives Grant to Explore Cellulosic Biomass Extension
Education Needs
11/12/07
Contact: Laura Probyn
517-432-1555, ext. 171
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- There’s a growing urgency to develop new technologies for producing alternatives to petroleum-based fuels using renewable resources. Public and private organizations are engaged in research to harness the biomass produced in forests and fields, but how will that research be disseminated to entrepreneurs, forest managers, farmers, landowners and emerging industry managers?
To find the gaps that exist between research and education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research and Extension Education System (CSREES) has awarded a one-year $55,000 grant to Michigan State University (MSU) Extension and the MSU Department of Forestry to develop priorities for funding, developing and delivering Extension educational programs related to cellulosic and woody biomass biofuel development.
The award is one of four grants that CSREES has awarded for Renewable Resources Extension Act National Focus Fund projects. A total of $264,000 was presented to researchers, who will look at opportunities for Extension programs aimed at expanding education around forest and rangeland renewable resources at the state, regional or national level.
Cellulosic ethanol is produced from plants such as grasses, shrubs and trees. Considerable research is under way in both the public and private sectors to develop processes that efficiently convert these products into ethanol and other renewable fuels. Alongside that work stands a need for education for those engaged in producing raw material for that industry, especially forest managers and landowners who want to market their timber and grasses.
“As the markets develop and the price of corn goes up because of its use for ethanol, cellulosic ethanol will become economically competitive. This seems to be the consensus nationwide,” says Karen Potter-Witter, MSU professor of forestry. “We will identify Extension education needs nationwide related to cellulosic biomass.”
Just as the producers of corn and soybeans have done for generations, grassland and forest managers will be looking to state land-grant colleges and universities and the Extension system for help in managing their crops to enhance their viability and marketability for woody biomass production. On the production side, facility managers and engineers are facing issues related to handling and processing new fuel inputs and products.
The MSU project will be led by Potter-Witter and MSU forestry specialist Georgia Peterson. They will begin by convening a team to examine current Extension programs related to biomass production and evaluate them against a set of criteria. These criteria include adaptability across regions and states, potential for integration into existing programs as well as stand alone as a new activity, and scalability among communities of varying sizes. They’ll also look at the programs’ outcomes and outputs and whether they point to a need to develop Extension experts for their delivery.
They will use the information gleaned from that work to form a multidisciplinary panel of Cooperative Extension natural resource educators from across the United States to look at what exists and what is needed, and to develop a gap analysis.
The panelists will discuss their findings with stakeholders in their home states, including members of the ethanol industry, forest managers and landowners. They will share the input from these individuals with the full panel, and that information will be combined with that previously gathered to produce a final gap analysis.
The analysis will be used to guide development of new Extension programs aimed at all components of this emerging industry sector.
“We hope to develop a model that will be useful for every state and builds on the research that MSU and other universities are doing in cellulosic ethanol,” Potter-Witter says. “It’s just what the land-grant system has always done -- conduct important research and then extend the findings to those who can use it to improve society.”
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