Wood Based Biofuels Conference

Wood Based Biofuels Conference

Wood Based Biofuels Conference. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

Beginning Monday, Seattle will be the site of the first Northwest Wood-Based Biofuels/Co-Products Conference. Charles Burke, Communication Director for Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance or NARA says there are several agencies working to bring this conference to the northwest.

BURKE: The conference is actually being hosted by the USDA and Washington State University Extension. Now having said that the USDA is who funds NARA and a number of other organizations operating here in the northwest to explore the feasibility of using wood to biofuels. USDA and Washington State are kind of the umbrella organizations over all of this.

Burke says there are some unique aspects to this conference.

BURKE: First of all it's a first time conference. What's unique about this one as opposed to a lot of the other biofuels orientated conferences that are occurring all over the world are two things. First, this conference is very focused on the Pacific Northwest region and what possible scenarios can come out of and affect the Pacific Northwest.

He says the other distinction is this conference is just looking at wood resources for the conversion into a variety of chemicals and co-products. And Burke says they felt it was necessary to bring all the players to the table.

BURKE: The Department of Energy, a number of other federally funded organizations also have programs that are looking at biofuels development, particularly in this case wood feedstock biofuels development and there's private companies that are kind of doing their thing as well.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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