From the Editor: It’s Time for Long-Term Energy Plan

By Suz-Anne Kinney
From the June 2010 Forest2Fuel newsletter.

Controversy erupted last week with the publication of a report prepared by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The report, some say, leaves the impression that the carbon footprint of biomass electricity is worse than that of energy produced by oil and coal. As biomass has almost universally been considered carbon neutral to this point, this statement has raised more than a few eyebrows--and voices. The Biomass Power Association (BPA), for instance, has requested a correction of misinformation contained in the report. Environmental groups will no doubt pick up some of the conclusions reached in the report and use them to oppose biomass power plants going forward.

As the BPA points out, 110 pages into the report, the Manomet Center finally confirms what we all knew: “All bioenergy technologies, even biomass electric power compared to natural gas electric [the next cleanest technology], looks favorable when biomass waste wood is compared to fossil fuel alternatives.”

Perhaps if the study had clarified its definition of biomass upfront, the reaction might have been less antagonistic. The definition of biomass used in the study is Massachusetts specific. Because there are minimal logging residues available for energy production in Massachusetts, the study concludes whole trees will need to be used to supply biomass power facilities. Since there is a minimal pulpwood market in Massachusetts, the study classifies as biomass anything that is more than 5” in diameter on a tract already being harvested for sawtimber.

Using this expanded definition of biomass, the Manomet Center concluded that it takes 21 years to recapture the carbon emitted when biomass replaces a coal in an electricity plant. In isolation, this statistic seems alarming. Let’s put it in context, though. When you compare these numbers to the length of time it takes coal to recapture the carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere when it is burned, the numbers look pretty good. Infinity is alarming. Oil, coal and natural gas will never undo any of the negative impacts on the environment for which they are responsible. Compared to “until the end of time,” 21 years seems a relatively short time for erasing a carbon debt.

If Massachusetts, or any other state for that matter, turns its back on biomass power because it takes 21 years to recover additional carbon emissions, they would be shortsighted in doing so.  I know some people believe that all forests should be left in place to sequester the emissions produced when burning oil and coal. This logic, however, fails to account for the fact that most forests are owned by private individuals who depend on timber production for income. These forest owners benefit from new markets for forest products, as do the communities in which they live. And new markets generally incent landowners to plant more trees. Cleaning up GHGs emitted by oil and coal should not be the sole responsibility of forest landowners.

And let us not forget that oil, coal and natural gas are not renewable, environmentally friendly sources of energy. All of these sources are being depleted rapidly and will, in the not too distant future, be scarce. In the last three months, we’ve seen the trifecta of deadly disasters caused by fossil fuels: the Gulf oil spill, the West Virginia coal mine collapse and the natural gas line explosion in Texas. The fact is the removal and transport of these energy sources often have negative repercussions. While the negative impacts of harvesting biomass are weighted heavily in the Manomet study, the negative impacts associated with oil and coal are beyond its scope.

But they shouldn’t be beyond the scope of the public discourse on the subject. Reducing carbon in the atmosphere may be one of our most important goals in the long-term, but values such as safety, renewability and sustainability should also be essential ingredients of our long-term energy plans.

And long-term strategy is what we need to be thinking about. In the next to last paragraph of the study, the Manomet Center writes:

I say we’ve been thinking about the short-term for far too long. We fixate on this quarter’s results or this November’s election. Our obsession with the short term has crowded out our ability to think strategically about the long term. It’s time to act, to develop and implement an energy plan that is both economically and environmentally sustainable, a plan that will carry us securely into the next century.

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