WASILLA -- Classrooms at the new Susitna Valley Junior/Senior High School could end up being warmed with one of the oldest heating sources around, paid for by the state as part of its renewable energy push. But nobody's sawing trees just yet.

The Alaska Energy Authority has agreed to spend $20,000 to analyze whether energy-efficient wood boilers would be cheaper to use than heating oil for the roughly 50,000-square-foot school being built near Talkeetna. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which requested the study, has also chipped in $5,000.

The school is replacing one that burned beyond repair in a 2007 fire that started while a contractor was remodeling the school. Collins Construction is building the $17.4 million new school, set to open in December 2009, and plans to install a fuel-oil boiler.

So why the effort to study using wood heat?

Local residents cooked up the idea. For more than a year, they've pressed the borough to consider using a wood-heated boiler as the primary heating source for the school, and to leave the fuel-oil boiler as a secondary heater. The wood could be harvested on borough-owned land a few miles from the school, whereas fuel oil would be trucked to the school from Nikiski, said mechanical engineer Tami Hamler, a supporter of the wood-fired boiler project. And if sustainable harvest practices are used, wood from public land could heat the school indefinitely, Hamler said.

"We have forest all around us here. I'm a proponent of using our resources in a wise way, in a sustainable way. Alaska has oil resources -- they're finite," Hamler said.

The borough applied to the Alaska Energy Authority earlier this year for funding to study the project. Before agreeing to pay for the study, Alaska Energy Authority did a cursory review of the project.

AEA alternative energy program manager Peter Crimp said an initial review was encouraging. It estimated a $76,000 yearly savings if wood provided 75 percent of the heat for the school. With a $561,000 price tag for the three wood boilers, two buildings to house them and store wood plus labor and wood costs, Crimp said the investment could pay off in about seven and a half years.

But he cautioned the initial review relied on ballpark estimates. The more in-depth study will show actual costs and ultimately determine whether adding a wood-heated boiler is a fiscally responsible decision, he said.

The study will also look at whether the project is environmentally responsible, an important factor for the borough. Last December, the borough Assembly passed a resolution requiring new buildings larger than 10,000 square feet to meet a nationally recognized green building standard known as LEED, or Leader in Energy and Environmental Design.

Borough officials have estimated meeting such standards could extend the life of buildings by 20 percent.

Crimp said as long as wood to fuel the boiler is harvested in a way that allows regrowth; complying with LEED certification should be no problem.

The wood-fired boiler recommended for the project, made by the Minnesota-based company Garn, are very energy-efficient, he said. He explained that the boilers burn wood at high heat and emit mostly steam and very few particulates. Its efficiency is nearly the same as a fuel-oil boiler, according to the energy authority's initial review, which relied on estimates provided by manufacturers.

Ionia Inc., a group of families who live near Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula, last year installed two Garn boilers to heat a 12,000-square-foot community hall and eliminated a diesel-fuel heater previously used to heat part of the community hall. Resident Ted Eller said the Garn boiler provides in-floor heating and heated water that community residents use for daily needs such as washing. The organic farming community plans to use spruce bark beetle-killed trees to heat the hall in the near term, and grow its own trees for harvest in the future.

Eller said in the year the boilers have been in place, the community has cut its wood use by as much as a quarter, and eliminated its use of heating oil. The community also is saving $750 a month because it no longer needs to buy propane for an on-demand water heater, he said.

Hamler toured Ionia and described the system as a firebox surrounded by a large volume of water. The energy, or heat, from burning the wood is transferred directly into the surrounding water, which is then sent through the existing pipes to heat the building.

Just who would stoke the fire at the Mat-Su school is one of several questions that Susitna Valley Assemblyman Tom Kluberton hopes the study will iron out.

Kluberton said it doesn't seem practical to hire a school district employee to feed the boiler for three hours a day, five days a week and a few hours on weekends, the amount AEA estimated. Perhaps the same contractor who supplies the wood can do that work, he said.

If the numbers prove out, Crimp said the boiler project would be one of several projects the legislature could look at funding out of a $145 million renewable energy fund set up this year.

The project will have lots of competition, however, with 230 other applications from around the state also being processed.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

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