Chippewa County's Biofuel Development Opportunity Zone A-rating is first in Wisconsin
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A decade ago, Chippewa County was ground zero for a new energy economy as oil and gas producers clamored for high-quality silica sand to prop open deep underground wells.
Now the western Wisconsin county is seeking to pivot to a greener energy economy.
Chippewa County is one of the nation’s first Biofuel Development Opportunity (BDO) Zones, a designation signalling readiness for bio-based manufacturing. With the frac sand industry in retreat, the goal is to leverage the massive rail terminals left behind to capitalize on the county’s rich agricultural resources.
“The rail infrastructure is still there,” said Charlie Walker, president and CEO of the Chippewa Economic Development Corporation. “How are we going to get these facilities that were built for frac sand that are no longer being (used) – how can we find another industry for that?”
Boom and bust
Wisconsin doesn’t have fossil fuel resources, but it does have a role in how we get them out of the ground.
In the late 2000s oil and gas producers developed a new technique for tapping hard-to-reach reserves by drilling into shale formations and injecting fluid to fracture the rock. Sand particles in the fluid prop open those fissures and allow oil and gas to escape.
Wisconsin sits atop sand known as Northern White, whose strong, round grains are especially good at this job.
Soon mines were opening everywhere.
Wisconsin’s sand output grew 10-fold between 2010 and 2014, when the state produced a record 38.3 million metric tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Most of that was shipped to the Permian basin in Texas and New Mexico, the nation's most productive oil field.
But by the end of the decade, producers in the Permian had figured out how to make do with local sand, which cost about half as much and didn’t have to be shipped across the country.
Texas overtook Wisconsin as the nation’s leading industrial sand producer in 2019, and now sells more than three times as much sand as the Badger State. By 2023, Wisconsin’s sand production had fallen by about half, though the roughly 19 million tonnes was still five times the amount produced in 2010.
“Now we’re in equilibrium,” said Kent Syverson, a professor of geology at UW–Eau Claire and consultant for the industry.
But the contraction hasn’t been uniform.
Sand producers with efficient operations (mining, processing, and loading at a single location) and access to oil fields in Canada, North Dakota, and Appalachia are still selling sand and turning a profit, Syverson said.
Those on rail lines serving southern markets — like those in Chippewa and Baron counties — have mostly folded or idled their mines.
“For all practical purposes ... it's done,” Walker said. “I guess you could say it was a good run at it. We did get some rail infrastructure built.”
Walker said he first started thinking about the bioeconomy as a compliment to sand mining.
Mine permits require operators to do reclamation, essentially returning the land to its previous state, minus the sand underneath. Walker suggested growing high-starch grasses that could supply a local ethanol plant.
“They were really enthused about doing that,” Walker said. “And then, of course, the whole industry kind of caputted.”
So Walker pivoted to finding a new use for several massive rail loading terminals.
“They were sitting empty,” Walker said. “How do you utilize them?”
Helping rural communities market assets
Given the largely rural county's farming base, Walker decided to explore bioenergy as a possible replacement and discovered the BDO Zone initiative.
Launched in 2020, the zones were developed as a tool to help rural communities to attract investment while eliminating risk for potential investors, said Aryn Garswood, head of the BDO Zone initiative for Ecostrat.
The rating is a transparent, standards-based certification that locations have an adequate supply of biomass, infrastructure, and community support for biofuel production.
Ecostrat also provides expertise for communities that don’t have the resources to identify and quantify those resources or market them to the industry.
“A lot of the communities that we work with are very small and very rural and lack the ability to be able to do that without some sort of tool,” Garswood said.
Ecostrat has issued more than 40 BDO Zone ratings in the United States and Canada and is currently evaluating another 20 communities.
The initiative has yielded a handful of planned investments — including biorefineries in Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and California that plan to produce sustainable aviation fuel from woody biomass and corn stover — though none of the plants have been built.
“These projects take time to get built and financed,” Garswood said.
Chippewa County used a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to hire Ecostrat to do the feedstock assessment, settling on corn stover, the parts of the plant left over when the grain is harvested.
Wisconsin’s first such BDO Zone, Chippewa County earned an “A” rating, indicating a strong capacity to support biomanufacturing with relatively low risk of supply-chain disruption.
According to the assessment, there is at least 380,000 dry tons of stover per year available within a 75-mile radius and no real competition within 150 miles.
The county’s proximity to major markets like the Twin Cities and Chicago as well as access to transcontinental rail lines and an international port in Superior provide additional advantages.
“You got east, west, north, south,” Walker said. “If you want to do barge (on) the Mississippi, that’s less than 70 miles away.”
Walker said the county has had some “tire-kickers,” but no commitments amid the current uncertainty over federal energy and trade policy.
“They’ve actually visited the community,” he said. “Unfortunately, as you know, the markets are changing rapidly, so what we were working with is kind of on hold.”
But Walker said interest died down in the months leading up to the presidential election.
“We continue to ... market it,” Walker said. “We saw it coming with potentially the change in leadership, and then you’ve got potential recession, and then now you got tariffs, so that’s all gotta settle down.”