Van Webb, a logger and farmer from Sunapee, harvested from a mostly white pine lot on a 57-acre property in Unity, N.H., in 2016.

Many of the pine trees he harvested were low-grade — meaning the logs could not be sawed into boards at a sawmill. Instead, he sent the wood to the biomass plant in Springfield, N.H., where it was burned to create electricity.

Without a local market for this low-grade material, the harvest would probably not have been possible.

“I don’t know what we’d do if the Springfield wood energy plant was gone. In this part of the state, there is no other low-grade market for pine.” Webb said. “Without that market, this landowner would not have been able to have this property harvested — or at least not in a way that removes the low-quality trees along with some of the good trees — and leave a shelterwood forest of good quality that can now regenerate naturally with new seedlings.” [Read more…]