The Agricultural Watershed Institute (AWI), based in Decatur, Illinois, works with farmers, businesses, scientists and conservation professionals, and other stakeholders in a project called the Local Bioenergy Initiative.

AWI and its partners in the Local Bioenergy Initiative are beginning to grow perennial energy grasses in Central Illinois and to make grass pellets and briquettes for use as a heating fuel. This multifunctional project is designed to produce both renewable energy and a portfolio of environmental and economic benefits related to increasing the acreage of native grasses and forbs in an area now dominated by annual row crops.

native prairie grass and switchgrass
Perennial biofuel feedstocks: mixed warm season prairie grasses on the left and switchgrass on the right.
Photo courtesy of Agricultural Watershed Institute / K. Hanley

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Agricultural Watershed Institute

The Initiative includes three broad strategies:

Their approach to landscape design and market development uses the Green Lands Blue Waters strategies for adoption of continuous living cover. Production of biomass crops for energy and ecological enhancement necessarily involves synergies and trade-offs between these goals. The project uses an informal landscape design learning group to provide diverse perspectives to address questions of what to grow, and where and how to grow it in order to produce bioenergy feedstock, protect water quality, and achieve other conservation objectives.

Local Bioenergy Initiative is collaborating with the Illinois Biomass Working Group and other partners to promote market development for perennial energy grasses and related ecosystem services. For example, the Agriculture Watershed Institute bought a pellet mill and briquetter and paid for installation of three residential heating systems to demonstrate use of densified grass to replace fossil fuels on a small scale.