Now that Christmas is done, it’s that time of year to think about what to do with that natural tree that brightened your holiday (although in our house, we like to keep it up as close to the Epiphany as possible). Once you’ve decided that your tree needs to vacate your living room, it can still live on in the form of biomass for renewable energy. This piece from the Mission Local website says that in San Francisco, those green tannenbaums can now be green power.
At the biomass plant, the Christmas trees rise like phoenixes — or at least steam does, when their chips burn inside boilers. The steam-powered turbines generate electricity that is sold to PG&E. Then “it powers your laptop computer,” said Recology spokesperson Robert Reed.
Overall, San Francisco’s Christmas tree chips produce about 20 megawatts of power, or enough energy to serve 20,000 houses for a month, according to Chris Trott at the Tracy Biomass Plant. The plant has paid Recology for the chips for the past two Christmases, but only enough to cover the cost of transporting them to Tracy.
The rest of the year, Tracy Biomass uses peach pits, walnut shells and tree trimmings to power the plant.
Officials add that turning the trees into biomass fuel also reduces Christmas tree-related fires, as well as keeping the material out of landfills.