7th Annual Heating the Midwest Agenda to Focus on Alliances and Market Growth Strategies Heating the Midwest, an annual conversation about the role that biomass can and should play in proving space and industrial heating in the region will be held this year at the Black Bear Resort in Carlton, Minnesota May 1-3. Heating the Midwest brings together forestry, forest products manufacturing, agriculture, and energy professionals together to hear about the sector’s recent successes and discuss how they might catalyze further growth in the sector.

This year’s conference agenda will ask how the current base of support for biomass thermal energy might be expanded to generate not only increased policy momentum, but also overall familiarity with its operational, economic and societal benefits.

The upper Midwest is rich in both agricultural and forest biomass streams and both sectors generate significant economic activity across the region and the utilization. To ensure that the value of these resources are maintained, their utilization as a renewable thermal energy source must be both preserved and expanded. This year’s Heating the Midwest agenda is shaping up to closely examine each.

Featured Panel Conversations Include:

• Message and Messenger: Rethinking How Biomass Thermal Takes Itself to Market
• How Biomass Thermal Continues to Escape the Attention of Clean Energy Champions in the Upper Midwest
• Roll Call: Ensuring that Everyone who Benefits from a Strong Biomass Thermal Energy Industry is on the Team
• The Perfect Fit: Examining Biomass Thermal Projects that Work in Spite of Challenging Market Conditions
• Feast or Famine: Assessing the Current Inventory of Available Biomass Inventories in the Upper Midwest
• The Effort to Push Biomass Heat into New Applications Underway in the Upper Midwest