Biomass co-firing has the potential to be a low cost source of renewable energy that can utilize the existing infrastructure of existing coal fired power plants, while reducing the overall environmental impact of the existing systems. Though there are technical barriers to the development of co-firing systems, there is a growing need to utilize biomass resources in renewable energy production and several systems have shown the ability to do so successfully. In moving forward, project developers need tools to identify potential technical, economic or logistical issues when planning the development of such systems. The purpose of this study is to use the aggregated information regarding various combustion technologies, pre-treatment technologies and available biomass feedstocks to generate a decision support tool for energy providers that will help identify economic, environmental and social impacts of developing site specific biomass co-firing projects at existing coal fired power plants. This decision support tool will then be utilized to examine existing power plant and biomass data to generate a site specific case study in the state of Michigan.
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