Biopower

In response to our nation's growing need for baseload electricity generation, Duke Energy is pursuing the use of biopower (“biomass to electricity”) as a renewable energy resource.

There are varying definitions of what constitutes fuel for biopower. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, biopower is “renewable energy made from any organic material from plants or animals.” It is “derived from three distinct energy sources: wood, waste, and alcohol fuels. Wood energy is derived both from direct use of harvested wood as a fuel and from wood waste streams.” Animal wastes and agricultural “energy crops” are other fuels for biopower.

Advantages of biopower include its ability to dispatch electricity on demand and provide baseload-like capacity, much like fossil-fueled plants. In addition, many federal and state environmental agencies consider biopower to be carbon-neutral.

Duke Energy is employing a variety of strategies to make cost-effective investments in biopower in its retail states and comply with renewable energy mandates. In North Carolina, for example, the company is:

• Testing the co-firing of wood with fossil fuel at select existing facilities and exploring the potential to retrofit units at other sites to burn only wood fuel to generate electricity
• Supplying customers with power from landfill methane gas projects
• Making plans to procure electricity derived from animal waste, as stipulated in the state’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard

In addition, we have completed test burns of biomass at our Beckjord Station in New Richmond, Ohio.