With growing pressure on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas we are now more than ever in need of alternative sources of fuel to fill our increasing need for power. Whole tree wood chips are one of the alternative fuels that is being used in some co-generation plants to produce electricity. Though it is more expensive to produce energy by burning wood chips, there are many often overlooked benefits to using them as a source of fuel.

Starting in the forest where they are grown, fuel chips are generally produced from the lowest quality trees and otherwise un-merchantable parts of trees such as the tops, branches and even foliage. Burning these chips provides a market for a resource that is otherwise left in the woods to rot and considered a waste product of logging. This is a benefit to you as a landowner in a few ways. First, you won't have as much residual brush and slash left after logging which leaves a cleaner forest. As a forestry tool the foresters and loggers have an outlet for the low quality stems and can remove them, producing a higher quality forest over the long term. A third benefit is knowing that your resource is being utilized as completely as possible.

Unlike fossil fuels which are non-renewable, woodchips are a renewable resource. As long as our forests are maintained as productive forestland, there will always be a source of wood fuel chips. Wood chips are environmentally friendly in that they burn cleaner than coal and oil. Using a locally produced renewable resource such as whole tree wood chips for energy production has positive effects on the local economy as well. Many jobs are created in the production, transportation, and use of these chips.

JC Eames Timber Harvester's has expanded our operation to include whole tree chipping. This service is in demand with many long term forest landowners as well as for the land clearing market. What better source of fuel than one that we can produce not only in our own country but on our own property as well.