Burn Up the Biosphere and Call It Renewable Energy: The New Taxpayer Bailout That Will Make You Sick AND Poor

Last week President Obama announced his plans to ensure that the
mandate for biofuels, 36 billion gallons by 2022, voted into law in
the Energy Independence and Security Act in 2007, is met, and to
provide huge new supports through the USDA for the cutting, harvesting
and transport of biomass (aka forests, plants) to be delivered to
incinerators and burned as "renewable" electricity and
heat.

The transportation biofuel mandate was adopted without clear
consideration of the impacts of production on food, public health,
direct and indirect land use, greenhouse gas emissions, soils, water
or biodiversity. Since being passed into law, the critique of
biofuels, particularly corn ethanol, has only grown deeper and more
damning. Cellulosic fuels, not much available yet, will, according to
mythology, avert these concerns because they are made from the
inedible parts of plants. True, we do not eat forests, but creating
huge new demands for wood is a recipe for disaster.

Lucky, technological hurdles have slowed the development of cellulosic
fuels, but no such hurdles lie in the way of burning biomass for
electricity and heat. Across the country, communities are being
offered "green jobs" cutting, hauling and chipping their forests
to feed the gaping maws of a new generation of "green energy"
utilities being constructed or retrofitted in their neighborhoods. At
least 200 new burners are proposed around the country. Further, many
facilities that burn coal are seeking to co-fire biomass under the
assumption that burning trees is a step up from burning coal. It's
not.

To fully appreciate the magnitude of this race to burn up the
biosphere, consider the scale - each demands on the order of 13
thousand tons of wood per year, delivered by a stream of diesel-fueled
trucks, to produce one megawatt of electricity. According to the
Energy Information Agency, in 2007 The U.S. produced 4348856 GWh of
electricity. If we were to produce 10% of our electricity with
biomass, my back of the envelope calculation suggests we would need
about 760 million tons of wood. At a moderate harvest rate (20 tons
per acre), that would mean cutting an area approximately the size of
Florida each year. The impacts on air quality and human health from
burning it would be staggering.

States like Massachussetts, where the community resistance has
brought these figures to light, are facing 5 proposed new facilities
which combined would produce 135-200 MW, an increase of a mere 1.3% in
generating capacity for the state. This would require over 2 million
tons of wood -- requiring cutting over the entire 844 thousand acres of
public and private forest land in the state within 6 years. Similar
outrageous proposals are on the table in virtually every state in the
nation.

These demands are on a collision course with fast rising new
industries producing pellets and chips for export, especially to the
EU, where even larger biomass burners are being constructed, (120- 300
Megawatts), requiring millions of tons per year, largely imported!

It gets worse: there is a direct connection with the recent news that
Arborgen is seeking to test genetically engineered eucalyptus in the
U.S. (see NYT Jan 29) The greater the demand for biomass,
the greater the likelihood that GE trees will gain a toehold and
native forests will give way to industrial plantations of GE
trees.

In communities where biomass burners are being proposed, often poor
and hard pressed for job opportunities, citizens are waking to the
realities: First of all, the promised "green jobs" are not as
numerous or as lucrative as hoped. Further, the emissions from biomass
burning are making it increasingly difficult to breathe! A number of
medical professionals and associations have opposed biomass burning,
pointing out that it results in large quantities of particulate
matter, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile
organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxin. For
some contaminants, biomass emits more than coal. Biomass is often
loosely defined to include not just wood, but also garbage,
construction debris, tires, manure and much much more -- all of
which contribute further to the stew of airborne (and ash-borne)
toxins from incineration.

Community organizers are not standing by idly. This
week in Scotsburg Indiana, over 800 angry citizens crammed a meeting
of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to voice
opposition to the incinerator proposed by "Liberty Green". In
Gretna Florida, a standing room only crowd showed up to oppose an
ADAGE proposed incinerator -- the county commission had earlier voted
to remove cameras from the meeting hall after their meeting was
"disrupted" by angry citizens. In Massachussetts citizens have
pulled together a town wide election to overturn the town board's vote
to sell wastewater to cool the turbines of a biomass incinerator. In
Michigan, a newly formed community group is rapidly pulling together
to oppose several new biomass burners proposed for the state. People
are not stupid.

We have been sold this entire "burning biomass as renewable energy"
bill of goods on the assumption that burning wood (or other) is a step
up from burning coal or other fossil fuels. The argument is that trees
grow back (which is true, but ignores the consequences of soils
becoming depleted, compacted and eroded). When they grow back, in
theory they reabsorb the same amount of CO2 released when they were
burned. Unfortunately, this argument is flat out wrong, as recently
detailed in an article published in Science entitled "Fixing A
Critical Climate Accounting Error." The greenhouse gas emissions
associated with cutting forest are considerable (which is why climate
negotiations have spent massive time debating mechanisms for
"reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, or REDD).
Those emissions can be counted at the cut, harvest and haul stage, or
they can be measured at the smoke stack. But they must be counted
because they do in fact exist! Unfortunately, under current
policies, in renewable energy "lore", these emissions are ignored
on all fronts and the "myth of carbon neutrality" is perpetuated.
Based on figures from the Department of Energy, if the U.S. adopts a
20% renewable portfolio standard, by 2020 over 11% of our emissions
would come from biomass burning, all uncounted, magically invisible
and mistakenly rewarded.

Right now, virtually every policy intended to support renewable
energy, here and around the globe, is resulting in massive new
funding, subsidies and mandates to cut and burn more forests. In
Europe, about two-thirds of "renewable energy" is from
biomass burning, accounting for nearly 80% of growth in renewables
from 1990-2005. In the U.S. more than twice as much "renewable
energy" is produced from biomass as from wind and solar combined. In
sum, when we support the development of renewable energy, we are
mostly supporting the burning of the biosphere.

When Barack Obama tells us he wants to provide further supports for
renewable energy, rather than blindly cheering, we should take to the
streets screaming in outrage! Our tax dollars, via the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act are being used to pay up to 30% of
capital costs for building biomass burners -- a great deal for the
industry that could cost us up to about 8 billion. An additional
450-850 million similarly goes to support biomass burning via the USDA
"Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which will pay growers, cutters
and harvesters for providing the massive quantities of biomass. A
production tax credit -- nearly a billion per year is up for
reauthorization -- and this is just the tip of the subsidy iceberg. In
sum, we are footing the bill with close to 10 billion per year of our
tax dollars, to have our forests and farmlands pillaged and our health
compromised under the guise of "renewable energy". Time to rethink
the meaning of "renewable," and fast before every last scrap of
living plant matter on earth goes up in smoke.

Deeply ironic is the fact that as this disaster is unfolding, separate
channels are developing policies and incentives for marketing forest
and agricultural lands carbon sequestration as part of the
scheme for "offsets". The Peterson amendment to the American Clean
Energy and Security Act is case in point -- over 2 billion tons of
carbon offsets -- almost entirely from forests and farms. This is
called "having your cake and eating it too". If we want to enjoy
the benefits of carbon sequestering ecosystems, (but hopefully not as
an excuse for ongoing pollution as offsets do!), then we cannot also
rely on those forests and farms to provide every twig and leaf and
branch and scrap of "residue" to fuel a faux-green
"bioeceonomy". Time for a reality check: what is nature for,
anyway?