The University of Montana announced Friday that it will suspend indefinitely plans to build a woody biomass heating plant on campus and publicly apologized for a top university administrator’s derogatory comment about critics of the project.
UM President Royce Engstrom cited financial viability, fuel supply, increased pollution and the deteriorating discourse surrounding the $16 million heating project as reasons for scrapping plans to build an industrial-sized biomass gasification system in the foreseeable future.
Friday’s news conference marked the end to the university’s yearlong effort to reduce its carbon footprint by switching from natural gas, a fossil fuel, to heat its buildings to woody biomass, a renewable resource. UM proposed trucking in 16,000 tons of hogfuel from local forests to burn in a state-of-the-art biomass gasification boiler slated for construction next to the existing heating plant.
