Is Biomass Energy Really Renewable?

[Gabe Ayers]

http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/biomass_energy_juggernaut_threatens_human_and_forest_health/C564/L564/

Biomass Energy Juggernaut Threatens Human and Forest Health

By George Wuerthner, 5-21-10

The long awaited Kerry-Lieberman energy bill known as The America Power Act has, among other goodies for industry, a clause that legally defines biomass incineration as “carbon-neutral” and “renewable.” Biomass includes field stubble, sewage, construction waste, municipal garbage, and other sources, but the largest source for commercial biomass electrical generation plants is wood.

While I cannot comment on the merits of the bill overall, the provisions that would allow wood biomass energy to be labeled as renewable and carbon neutral poses a real threat to our forest ecosystem, human health, and global planetary climate. Already in Europe two thirds of the “renewable” energy portfolio comes from wood biomass—and increasingly that wood is being imported from even outside of Europe including the US and South America.

This legislation will only increase the demand for wood biomass consumption. Far more dangerous is the legislation helps to promote the widespread perception that burning woody biomass is somehow “green” energy. Since many government entities from local cities to states now require renewable energy as part of their energy portfolios, defining wood energy as a renewable energy creates a direct economic windfall profit for the timber industry.

Worse, the use of woody biomass burning to meet renewable portfolio “clean energy” mandates is a fraud perpetuated on unsuspecting consumers, many of whom believe when they are paying for “renewable” electricity they are supporting the development of clean and truly renewable sources like wind and solar energy. Instead, millions of taxpayers’ dollars are being poured into incinerators and subsidies for the cutting of forests to provide biomass energy that could be better spent on energy conservation.

Unfortunately like the ethanol debacle that has taxpayers subsidizing corn-based ethanol that uses more energy to produce than it creates when burned, many are jumping on the biomass energy bandwagon with a similar lack of critical review of the claims of “green” energy.

One of the prevailing myths about biomass is that it is “carbon neutral.” Biomass combustion power plants are treated under regulatory and subsidy programs as if they emit “zero” carbon dioxide. Because of its low energy content, burning wood releases 1.5 times smokestack CO2 than burning coal to produce the same amount of energy.

Plus recent research suggests that logging disturbance of forest soils can increase carbon losses as well. Then there is the carbon emitted by the logging equipment, trucks that carry the wood to the mill, and so forth. Finally, since most wood biomass burners are expensive to operate, they are often supplemented with natural gas, coal, or other fossil fuels, which also emit carbon.

All this carbon is immediately added to the excessive amount of human-caused carbon already spewing into the atmosphere. Most climate scientists believe we need to not only limit new carbon sources, but reduce the current carbon levels.

The time factor for resequentration of carbon is a critical issue in the global warming discussion that is conveniently ignored by biomass advocates. Timber companies and wood biomass advocates argue that since trees regrow they will in effect re-sequester carbon released by burning biomass, so we can burn wood without serious consequences.

Unfortunately carbon sequestration takes decades to centuries to fully rebind the carbon released by burning. The peat industry and the governments of Finland and Sweden even want peat to be regarded as renewable biomass even though it takes thousands of years to renew a peat bog.

According to the Energy Information Administration projections, a 20% renewable standard in the US as called for in the Kerry-Liebermann energy legislation would result in the emission of 700 million tons of CO2 from biomass burning. This amount of C02 would represent about 10% of total US emissions in 2020. Yet these emissions would be unaccounted under current “carbon neutral” renewable energy legislation.

Worse, biomass energy emits a large amount of fine particulate matter. And many new plants are sized to have a generating capacity under 40 megawatts which avoids the requirements of the Clean Air Act for Best Available Control Technology and the application of PSD standards.

Even with pollution control devises biomass energy is dirty. For instance, the McNeil Biomass Energy Plant outside of Burlington Vermont sports the latest pollution control devises yet is the largest single source of air pollution in the state.

The American Lung Association’s national office issued a statement calling the America Power Act an “outrageous proposal [that] creates an open door through which millions of tons of life-threatening pollution could be allowed to flow. We oppose these provisions. The American Lung Association cannot support legislation that includes changes to the Clean Air Act that undermine the protection of public health.”

Perhaps overcoming these air pollution problems is the reason Senators Max Baucus and John Tester, along with Mike Crapo of Idaho introduced legislation to amend the Clean Air Act definition of “renewable” energy in hopes that this would increase the use of woody biomass for fuel.

Ironically Senator Baucus in his speech introducing the legislation notes that warmer winters have allowed pine beetles to flourish in Montana contributing to a large number of dead trees. Normally cold winters kill the beetles, keeping their numbers in check. Yet Baucus, along with Tester and Capro favor burning these trees for biomass energy without apparently considering that the resulting emissions would be adding to the global C02 levels, which in turn will create even warmer temperatures facilitating even greater beetle spread. I don’t expect Baucus or other Senators to be experts on energy and its consequences, but if I were them, I would be suspicious of my legislation if it is endorsed by the timber industry.

If you want to understand why Baucus, Capro and Tester are supporting this legislation, one needs to follow the money. In this case look no further than noting that Plum Creek Timber Company, the Darth Vader of the Northwest, has endorsed this proposal. According to news reports “Plum Creek applauds Senators Baucus, Tester and Crapo for their leadership. This bill will ensure wood is on an even playing field with other renewable energy materials … It will clarify much of the confusion in the marketplace, and will provide a strong incentive for the use of wood in producing green energy.”

Using the red herring that dead trees will increase fire severity and spread (another disputed assertion), most western wood biomass advocates suggest that logging the forests will reduce wildfires—an unproven assertion. Yet there is a growing body of research that suggests that thinning and removal of trees can sometimes increase wildfire intensity and spread. Furthermore dead trees are less likely to burn than drought stressed live green trees due to their flammable resins. But beyond those problems, even wildfires do not release nearly as much carbon as commercial biomass energy facilities. Most of the carbon in a forest remains on site either as charcoal in the soil and/or as snags that take decades to decompose.

Beyond these questionable assumptions about carbon neutral status, the assertion that using biomass is “renewable” is also unproven. Biomass energy requires huge amounts of wood. The repeated removal of large quantities of biomass from forests will impoverish forest soils. Burning all this material for biomass energy will threaten the long term sustainability of our forests.

Another long term problem posed by the America Power Act is the incentive it provides to create wood biomass plantations. Already much of the Southeast United States has been turned into sterile monocultures of pine for pulp and paper operations. If wood biomass becomes the fuel of choice to meet “renewable” energy standards as it is poised to do, we can expect even more of our natural forests to be converted into biomass monoculture tree plantations to the detriment of native species and native forests. Recently the USDA approved planting of a genetically modified tree designed to grow faster to fill the demand created by biomass energy.

Already, 50% the “renewable” energy in the U.S. comes from biomass incinerators. For instance, 82% of Pennsylvania “clean energy” comes from burning something. In Massachusetts, 49% of its renewable energy comes from biomass burning. In Massachusetts, five new wood burning electrical plants are proposed that would consume at least 2.4 million ton of wood per year. If the wood for these operations were limited to just the state of Massachusetts, collectively the five plants would vacuum all of the public and private forests in the state of its wood in just sixteen years.

If biomass energy production were fully implemented, it would become the single largest human impact to land in the country, requiring the near full utilization of all the U.S. forests and much of its agricultural lands for fuel production, contributing to what one TNC scientist has termed “energy sprawl.”

Beyond the threat posed by large scale commercial biomass energy production to the forests, human health, and the land in general, subsidizing biomass reduces the funding available for other energy production including energy conservation that would have far more beneficial and longer lasting value to society

[goodcompanion]

Biomass and the generally positive public attitude toward it are pretty terrifying. Here in Vermont, a pretty well-educated state, few question the basic assumptions of biomass as Jason has done. Middlebury College trumpets its biomass plant as a sustainable energy model.

Everyone wants to sustain our current lifestyle, but few of us are foresters, and even fewer of those foresters will really put forest ecology ahead of the economic imperative to extract.

[lancek]

There has been a general scare in this area that if biomass is interduced that the raw material market for grade hardwood , pallets and ties will dry up because the pulp and biomass plants are paying more per ton than we can!

[jac]

Seems to me like a desparate bid by society trying to maintain a non sustainable life style..Growing fuel on farmland or using half decent timber is a recipe for collapse. How much diesel is used? If they carry on like this I can see a day when there is fuel in the Hummer but no bread on the shelf !!!..
John

[Carl Russell]

jac;18728 wrote:

…. How much diesel is used? …..

This point is missed by most. There is very little profit margin in this low grade and most of the value of the product goes to machinery that harvests , processes, and transports it to market. It is not as bad as ethanol, but there is a lot of diesel used to make the wood into a product that can be used to make energy.

Furthermore the economy of scale required to make harvesting this type of wood creates a lot of impact through traffic on the land, removal of coarse woody debris, and density reduction. There is very little sustainable about this “new” energy source. In our region the forest soils are in the preliminary stages of recovery from being over-pastured, compacted, and eroded, and now we are poised to rob them of any future productivity.

DUH!!! Forestry my ass:mad:

Carl

[lancek]

I have even let my timber harvesting magazine subscription laps because all they talk about is biomas any more of course all that mag is about is selling big equipment

[Scott G]

First, be careful of what you read.

It is easy to spot a biased article when it is laced with terms like “incineration” (def: to dispose of waste by means of combustion) vs combustion and other innuendos. TNC (The Nature Conservancy) is actually in favor of biomass energy on an appropriate scale in appropriate regions. Quoted “excerpts” can easily be taken out of context, especially when that is the author’s intent. I work with the local TNC on biomass utilization issues. It is easier to write a biased article rather than doing a thorough literature search and putting the knowns & unknowns forth for people to make reasoned decisions.

How many of you heat with wood? Do you consider that enviro friendly?

How many of your neighbors/friends also heat with wood? Total annual volume cords/tons for your region generated from your regions forests? Probably pretty staggering.

How many folks use pellet stoves or cordwood boilers over heating oil or propane? What are your thoughts on that?

What about all of those schools in Vermont that use woodchip heating systems instead of fuel oil?

Where do you draw the line?

I have stated a couple of times on this forum my thoughts on biomass energy. I am responsible, in my County forester role, for planning/procurement for our woodchip heating system that heats our 100k/sq ft transportation/ parks admin campus. We are getting ready to build/commision an identical system for our County jail.

All of our material comes from County lands. We/I manage about 35,000 acres of forested County Open Space. When the Jail comes on line we’ll consume ~ 1,600 geen tons/heating season to heat ~ 200,000 sq ft. On average, we produce 20-40T/acre just to get down to an acceptable basal area for the forest cover type we are working in. So you don’t have to do the math, that calculates to 40-80 acres/year to supply our heating needs. At a return interval for our poor/nominal sites out here of 30-50 years we won’t get through all of the forest in over 400 years before it is time to go back again. Granted we aren’t treating/managing all of that land area but it gives you a very clear rough idea of the numbers.

One size does not fit all. That not only goes for the regions specific forested resource but for the type/size of biomass energy facility as well. Out west we have an issue of lack of disturbance (wildfire or human management) that has resulted in dramatically increased stand densities, especially in pondo pine & D-fir, that are completely unsustainable for the particular species. These forests are at substantial risk for stand replacement fire, something that these species are not adapted too, unlike lodgepole pine. Point being that people aren’t fighting over the resource out here, more in line of we are trying to figure out what to do with all of it.

I have stated that I am completely in favor of appropriately scaled heat and combined heat/power facilities provided they are based on an appropriate sustainable yield model that is locally based. I am completely opposed to stand alone electrical generation and cellulosic ethanol plants. They have to reach out too far and utilize volumes that are not realistically sustainable from a forestry or local economy perspective.

With biomass heat you realize efficiencies in the 80-85% range, with electrical generation the number drops to ~ 30%. You need to use the heat…

Biomass is carbon neutral when compared to fossil fuels. With petroleum the carbon source has been/would be sequestered for millions of years (don’t get me started on BP/Gulf) vs wood fiber that is part of the short term carbon cycle. Many of the slighted arguments you the faulty assumption of the “decades it take a tree to grow”. When we work the numbers, like all of forestry, it is on a stand, not an individual basis. What period of time it takes to grow a ton of wood in a stand, not a tree to maturity.

So, I caution all of you to not take the “one size fits all” approach.

If you want to see where I am coming from/background on this, google “Scott Golden Colorado Woody Biomass Energy” and you should be able to come up with something…

[near horse]

Right now, if I’m not mistaken, there’s gov’t $$$ for providing biomass to E plants – lots of comercial logging guys here are making additional bucks from hauling out the slash or contracting it to the E company to haul.

[Carl Russell]

Scott, I appreciate your perspective, but honestly man, you are one is very few who are working to establish scale appropriate systems. Around here in the media, and the Dept of Forestry, they are not talking about biomass in such terms. They are using terms that would lead you to believe that biomass can be developed on a state wide basis, and that it will not just be schools or municipal buildings, but power generation etc., that using biomass is environmentally friendly, with no explanations about the way the forest is managed to supply the wood, and the emphasis would lead you to believe that the new markets will bring the forest industry back.

There is no doubt biomass has some value, but there is a lot more energy and technology used in biomass production than there is in a typical Vermont home heated by fuelwood. Biomass production in the form of chips and pellets requires a lot of energy and equipment, and there is the typical modern assumption that we will be able to keep it all working. If we replace oil with biomass, then we should really be looking at ways that make us more energy independent, not just as dependent on large capital outlays on equipment specialized equipment that require a secure source of energy to run them.

And this doesn’t come close to the foolishness that they are calling forestry that is required to facilitate these large volume harvests of low grade material.

Scott, hopefully you are in a position where you can have some affect on the development of the industry, but from my perspective, it is a freght-train with a new fuel source, and there are a lot of faulty assumptions that are keeping it moving.

Carl

[mitchmaine]

same here in maine, carl. we have lots of wood, but export most of our generated energy, and the demand “out there” will always be greater than what we can furnish. so the logger who sets up with energy contracts to fill is going to do what with those borderline sawlogs? you guessed it, and low level chipwood and biomass give small stumpage to the landowner compared even to pulpwood, so why would the logger care if his paycheck was the same or better? it’s usually about the money and not the greater good of the world, isn’t it. mitch

[lancek]

Scott Carl and mitchmain You all have relevant points I to have talked on here and other web pages about using bio gas to run my mill and kilns in that aspect I think that heating with wood and using it to produce bio gas are good things! Until the greed factor kicks in and then we will have a new set of problems! This is a good management tool if used right I think what we need to do is try to control it so wall street dose not do what they do best ! But sadly this will probably not happen and our grand children will suffer the after math

[Gabe Ayers]

Maybe the money will eventually be spent on taking care of the greater good – the common values beyond the wood. The value of the ecological services of the forest to buffer our human presence is priceless. Those who provide a superior service of enhancing this system by combining ecological services with natural capital development are as green as it gets and should be worth whatever money it takes for those people to survive in their community and place. We call it Ecological Capitalism.

You guys are great to read on this stuff. Thanks.

~

[Scott G]

My ire is more directed at generalizations and how they can diminish/mar a worthy cause if it is utilized in an appropriate & sustainable fashion that benefits management of the resource and the local economy. There is no denying, however, that quarterly profit reports from mega-corporations can take things to the extreme and bring the whole idea down in a ball of flames with large profit driven alterior motives.

I have severely pissed off more than one person at various biomass workshops or conferences that I have presented at by telling them that their 50MW or cellulosic ethanol plant was a worthless idea…, diplomatically of course. Oh well, it comes with the territory and being a true advocate for sustainable natural resource management and bio-regionalism.

If it keeps a local logger with his chipper filling a local trucker’s chip van that feeds a local district heating plant while enhancing rather than diminishing the local forest resource and keeps the money local, than I am all for it.

There are no silver bullets in renewable energy, but there are a lot of silver BBs’. We need to use multiple technologies where they work, are feasible, and are somewhat benign to the natural environment. The first step is to reduce our gluttenous energy consumption as a Nation, however…

[mitchmaine]

don’t worry about pissin’ somebody off, scott. that’s when you know your gettin’ close to the point. my dad used to say when you get the other guy hollering, you won, he’s out of arguments.

[near horse]

My 2 cents – I think a problem in the “alt E” arena is proximity of the end users. I agree w/ Scott regarding local use and local jobs in biomass E production it’s just that a big question is how are the major consumers of E not near places of easy or available power/heat generation going to get power? Those are the places that will drive policy decisions, unfortunately. So we either produce it locally and transmit it inefficiently over londg distances or haul the material(s) long distances to get closer to the end users.

It seems to me that the long range answer is some sort of amalgam of power generation sources, based on local/regional resources.

[Author]

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