Tallgrass taking root as UI biofuel
Dan Black's farm is your usual slice of Iowa countryside. There's corn and soybeans, and plenty of it.
This year, however, Black has set a portion of his land aside for a plant that is anything but typical for an Iowa farm.
About 15 acres are covered with fields of giant miscanthus — a tropical tallgrass being tested by the University of Iowa with the hopes that it will one day be a viable biofuel to help power its campus.
And with one growing season under his belt, Black says it's clear the grass, which is native to east Asia, has taken a liking to Iowa's rich soil.
"Miscanthus is not a lot different than any other plant," Black said. "It likes good dirt. It likes fertility. It likes water."
About 70 people — including farmers, agriculture experts and university sustainability workers — visited Black's farm Wednesday evening to see the UI pilot project firsthand. The field day, which was hosted by Iowa Learning Farms, the UI Office of Sustainability and UI Utilities and Energy Management, highlighted the early steps the university has taken to explore the grass' renewable energy potential.
UI is working to achieve a "net-negative" energy growth this decade, meaning it aims to be using less energy in 2020 than it did in 2010, even as its campus expands. To do so, UI is ramping up its use of biomass — for more than a decade it has been burning oat hulls — while attempting to draw down the amount of coal it burns at its power plant.
By 2020, UI aims to have 40 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources, said UI power plant manager Ben Anderson.
"Yesterday, we were at 16 percent, which was a pretty good day for us," Anderson said. "We keep climbing that ladder, and there's a lot of it coming from the oat hulls, but we know we need to get better."
Anderson said that next week, UI will be putting miscanthus to use in its boilers when it tests about 24 tons — something Anderson said will be a "good milestone for us."
Black approached UI to offer a portion of his acreage for the pilot project, with the university renting the 15 acres for five years and paying for the planting, maintenance and harvest of the miscanthus. UI, which also is working with a farm outside of Muscatine to grow the perennial grass, has said it hopes to plant an additional 2,500 acres of miscanthus by 2016.
"It just seems to make sense, if we can grow energy," said Black, a vice president with MidWestOne Bank whose farm is just south of Iowa City on Highway 1. "It's a renewable energy source — it just seems like it's worth a try, worth the effort and worth the experimentation to see if this will work for us. There's obviously challenges, but there weren't many soybeans in Iowa in 1930 either. Somebody had to start."
After going into the ground this past spring, the miscanthus has flourished on Black's farm. In some areas it already has grown higher than 6 feet, which is about twice as tall as typical first year growth, said Emily Heaton, a Iowa State University assistant professor of agronomy who spoke at the field day.
"Normally we don't harvest in the first year, but my goodness, there's plenty of biomass here to harvest," Heaton said. "The trick is we don't want to kill the stand by harvesting it too soon if it's wimpy in its first year. So I think what we've decided to do is wait and see. ... But if the fall and winter look good, I'd say harvest this in probably March or April, depending on the spring."
Reach Josh O'Leary at 887-5415 or joleary@press-citizen.com.