There's a biomass renaissance going on in New Hampshire and Vern Waters, like other timberland owners, loggers and foresters, hopes to benefit from it.

No one - including Waters - expects to get rich.

The longtime woodchipper can see, from his house, the power plant on Smith River Road in Alexandria where he once supplied wood chips. With plans now in the works to revive that facility, chippers like him may have a new customer on the horizon.

The hope for people like Waters is that by increasingly turning to biomass - a byproduct of timber harvesting - to fuel existing and future electricity generation needs, New Hampshire will continue to have both vibrant forests and a vibrant forest industry.

And in the process of having both, the Granite State, which already is 84 percent forested, will get "greener" still as biomass becomes the renewable fuel source of choice for electricity generation with the added benefits of reducing use of fossil fuels and the carbon they create when burned.

Biomass - as well as other renewable energy sources such as hydro, photovoltaic, wind and tidal - is also factoring into the math for companies like Public Service of New Hampshire, which has more than 400,000 customers and which, like other generators since 2007, has been required by law to increase its renewable energy portfolio.

During the current legislative session, lawmakers are expected to ratify House Bill 1434, which authorizes New Hampshire to implement the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Years in the making, the initiative would establish a "cap and trade" program for carbon dioxide emissions. Two years ago it motivated PSNH to convert a boiler at its Portsmouth power plant to burn woodchips.

Gov. John Lynch has set a goal of having New Hampshire produce 25 percent of its power through renewable energy by 2025.

The effort to get 25 percent of the state's energy from alternative sources is part of a national campaign called 25x25, which several governors and other officials throughout the nation have endorsed. The group's website is www.25x25.org.

Toward that end, there are plans for a 60-megawatt biomass facility in Berlin. Meanwhile, the plant that Waters used to supply is coming back online in late May or early June with capacity to make 16 megawatts of power - enough to serve some 16,000 households. .

Power plants in Bridgewater, Tamworth, Bethlehem, Whitefield and New London already use biomass to produce electricity and Plymouth State University is looking to convert to it from fossil fuels.

State Rep. Maida Kaen, (D + R-Lee), who chairs the House's Science, Technology and Energy Committee, said there are unknowns as the state looks to further its transition to renewable fuel sources.

PSNH has said it wants to increase its generating capacity, but should the Legislature support such a move it might send a signal to private power companies that New Hampshire favors regulated companies like PSNH over private "merchant generators," said Kaen.

The latter, she explained, reaps all the rewards but also incurs all the risks of building a new power plant while regulated utilities are guaranteed a rate of return.

There is also a question of transmission capability.

"None of the rules we have in place anticipated the small distributed generation units that now we would like to have."

But those details can be worked out while keeping sight of the overall goal, which Kaen said is to "reduce our reliance on oil and carbon-based energy, to reduce pollution, to save money in the long run by encouraging energy efficiency."

Biomass, she said, is an important part of the larger, ongoing energy discussion in New Hampshire, but "we cannot rely on one single thing to solve our problem."

"We need contributions from a lot of different sources and I'm sure there are many individuals who would like to contribute and it's important that we engage them," Kaen said.

Another group that needs to be engaged are residents, said Kaen.

"Let's hope it doesn't end up devolving into when a plant is proposed that it's not a 'not-in-my-backyard' scenario. We have worked hard in this committee to streamline rules for site evaluation and hopefully the local community can come together rather than fight about where it's located because we're all after the same thing," she said.

The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and the NH Timberland Owners Association want to be part of the state's energy solution, especially because their members can provide biomass fuel.

Biomass, according to SPNHF Spokesman Jack Savage, is "positive on any number of levels, but first, from a simple forest management perspective, this is essentially like weeding your garden and doing a biomass harvest is going in and pulling the weeds and instead of tossing them you're taking them and you're turning them into electrical power that ideally is replacing fossil fuels."

The "weeding" Savage described also allows "higher value trees" to flourish and to live long lives that will translate into valuable prices for the lumber they eventually produce. He added that smart forest management is a benefit for wildlife and for the landowner's bottom line.

Harvesting biomass, which is typically the branches and anything else left over after felling a tree for lumber, "is putting people to work now that the paper mill industry is taking a huge hit and there's also value in supporting the forest products infrastructure," said Savage.

"One of the concerns is that we're in a challenging period for forest products. Prices aren't great and you don't want the infrastructure, the industry to disappear. It's not just the guys in the woods. It's the guys repairing the trucks, the guys hauling the logs, the foresters who make the decision of what to cut when, and if that goes away, we put at great risk what I think is still the third-largest industry in the state," he said.

With pulp paper mill plants shutting down in Berlin and Groveton, some 1.25 million tons of wood will now be available annually on the market and in biomass generating plants, that wood could have found a new customer, said Savage.

He discounted the possibility that as the demand for biomass grows that other products, like wood for heating, would get more expensive.

"You're not going to take a nice saw log and sell it for biomass," Savage said, but as for biomass, "we see it as the supply being there, the demand for renewable energy being there and as a state we ought to get it done."

Jason Stock said biomass represents a "tremendous potential" for the New Hampshire forestry industry.

The executive director of the Timberland Owners Association and a Tilton resident, Stock noted that association members own some 1 million acres of land in the state, with huge tracts located in Plymouth, Hebron, Ossipee, Moultonborough and Sanbornton.

"We're the second most forested state in the nation so there's a tremendous amount of wood and without markets, it gets very difficult for landowners to hold on to that land. The point we raise time and again is that the markets allow the landowner to grow and maintain forests. If growing trees was widely popular, you'd see people bulldozing strip malls and planting trees," Stock said.

Biomass will help sustain forestry in New Hampshire, said Stock, and its return represents "an almost kind of renaissance."

"In the 70s, people were really getting into it and in the 80s and 90s we had the plants going but we had detractors saying this is old technology. Now, people are coming back around saying this is a pretty good thing after all and it's kind of neat to see that," he said.

For Waters, the renewed interest in biomass energy is good news.

A small-scale woodchipper, Waters estimates that he generates some 100 tons of biomass a week depending on the weather.

He sells his chips to the plant in New London and has done so for the past 15 years.

Biomass - "it should be a good market for the foreseeable future anyways," Waters said.

"This last year or so has been pretty tough," and should the potential of biomass be realized in New Hampshire, coming years may bring improvements for people in the forestry trades, said Waters, "but I don't think you're going to become a millionaire."