June 10, 1977
Page 18447
TREES: NATURE'S SOLAR COLLECTORS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the finite nature of many of the resources which our society consumes to support our life style has made us turn increasingly to renewable and recyclable sources of energy and critical material.
A recent article by Lester A. DeCoster, New England manager of the American Forest Institute calls attention to the role of wood and wood products as we come to grips with the finite nature of our resources.
The potential role of wood as one of our most valuable and adaptable resources is concisely presented in this interesting article. I recommend it to my colleagues and request unanimous consent to have it printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Bangor, Maine, May 4, 1977]
MAINE COVERED WITH TALL GREEN
(By Lester A. DeCoster)
If you live in Maine you probably drive by thousands of solar energy collectors every day; they're those tall, skinny things that turn green around the edges every spring; they're called trees and they cover 90 percent of the land surface of Maine.
Trees collect the sun's energy and lock it up in wood. Ignite a piece of wood and some of the energy comes radiating back. But you don't have to burn wood to greatly affect the energy picture. The National Academy of Sciences recently studied U.S. raw materials supply in relation to energy use and concluded that wood is the most efficient raw material available today.
Direct comparison of energy requirements for wood and nonwood components performing the same function is very striking. According to the National Academy of Sciences, steel floor joists require approximately 50 times more energy than their wood counterparts. Aluminum framing for exterior walls requires nearly 20 and steel about 13 times as much energy as wood. Steel rafters require 7 times the energy needed for wood rafters. Aluminum siding uses 4 times the energy of wood siding, and brick calls for 25 times the energy needed for equivalent wood siding.
David M. Smith, Yale University, Professor of Silviculture, recently released a report showing that Forest Management activities return 157 units of energy for each unit invested in management activities. This figure includes fuel for chain saws, tractors, etc., with an allowance for the energy involved in building the machinery. The comparable ratio for production of corn silage, one of the most energy efficient products of agriculture, is only about 15. In other words, modern forest management is about 10 times as energy efficient as one of the most efficient kinds of agriculture.
Foresters already have the knowledge to grow at least two times the wood we are presently growing on most acres. Forest industry has strong programs to improve the efficiencyof this natural process of growing trees. But State and Federal lands have been plagued by lack of funding and direction and land owned by private individuals, with the exception of outstanding examples, is relatively unmanaged. Forty-seven per cent of the forest land in Maine is owned by over 100,000 private individuals.
In a recent speech, John Calhoun, President of Forest Fuels, Inc., in Keene, New Hampshire, said, "No one has to be a genius, only a frustrated forester to see the forestry opportunities and challenges made possible by the 400 percent increase of the cost of energy over the past three years."
The amount of wood used in the U.S. is already more than 2 times the amount of all our use of metal. That is sure to increase as we use up nonrenewables and as energy becomes more costly. We may lack oil and coal, but when it comes to trees, the renewable resource, Maine is the Texas of the Northeast.