Story by David Knight,
Co-Publisher/Executive Editor
It’s interesting to observe all the drama over the commercialization of wood-to-energy and the controversies, debates, ironies, alliances, hypocrisy and spin that surround it. On the environmental front, Massachusetts recently released and misconstrued Manomet Study, conducted by state officials to address concerns over new wood-fired power plants proposed there, ignited new controversy, adding to the froth already whipped up by groups in a half dozen other states.
Among the environmental elite there has always existed an undercurrent of doubt about the large-scale use of wood for energy. Now some groups are questioning whether using wood for fuel is indeed carbon-neutral. (I’ll leave that one up to the scientists.) Another group calls biomass “dirty energy,” contending it is more polluting than coal, and points to “toxic incinerators that make people sick, pollute air and water, destroy forests and dry up rivers.” Various medical/health organizations have also joined in the naysayer chant.
Then there is the “not in my backyard” crowd, which discounts the positive immediate and long-term economic impact of a new energy plant and waxes over things such as transmission lines, truck traffic, noise, odor and other issues of “social justice.” These types would find something wrong with a factory that manufactured a cure-all drug for cancer.
Detractors would have one believe that using wood for energy beyond the dwelling is a new phenomenon. It isn’t. Wood has been used as industrial boiler fuel for decades. More than a century ago, large sawmills burned sawdust and other refuse to produce process steam, to generate electricity for their internal needs and to provide lighting for their captive towns. Later, new generation wood products plants and paper mills took up the practice, at least in part. Today, paper mills are the dominant consumers of biomass fuel, burning multiple millions of tons of bark and sawdust each year. Standalone wood-fired power plants emerged in California and the Northeast in the 1980s and several are still operating. I’m not aware of any related health-based lawsuit settlements/awards, forest destruction or dried up rivers as a result.
Any such plant built today would emit far less pollution than those of yesteryear because of much tougher federal regulations. Regarding regulations, some wood-to-energy proponents believe EPA’s action last May was influenced in part by the conflict industry’s smoldering skepticism of the wood-to-energy movement. That’s when the agency appeared to reverse its position on biomass boilers by proposing new Boiler Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards, which would classify biomass boilers, traditionally considered multi-fuel units, as incinerators. Thus, biomass boilers would be subject to new emission limits for various chemical compounds and particulate matter.
Evidently, if EPA implements the new rules, all existing biomass boilers would have to be retrofitted at significant expense and new plants incorporating them would also cost more. A final ruling is expected later this year. Meanwhile, several newly announced biomass-fired power plants are on hold. EPA’s action doesn’t appear to mesh very well with the Obama Administration’s efforts to drive development of alternative, and renewable, energy sources.
This is happening as wood energy momentum builds in Europe. Whatever the environmental sentiment surrounding wood-fired power plants is there, dozens of new ones are in the works as the EU strives to produce more electricity from renewable feedstocks and to reduce greenhouse gases from existing plants dependent on fossil fuels. Apparently, one way to accomplish this in coal-fired power plants is to pulverize wood pellets and blend the wood dust with the coal dust fuel. As a result, European utility companies are increasingly tapping North America for this wood pellet fuel, consuming 8 million tons in 2009. The European Biomass Assn. projects that by 2020 the EU could consume up to 50 million tons of pellets or other forms of densified wood fuel. U.S. observers believe that a sizable portion of this could originate in the South.
This development leads one to wonder if U.S. environmental warriors believe it’s more important that the EU embrace renewable energy fuels and reduce greenhouse gases than it is for American companies to do so, and to do it in part with U.S. grown feedstocks.
Governmental subsidies designed to help develop renewable energy sources are a sore point in certain forest industry sectors, notably pulp and paper and certain composite panel manufacturers. Here and in Europe, panel manufacturers are particularly upset that government is paying wood fiber competitors to burn the raw materials they need to manufacture core products. Both of these international sectors are concerned that increasing energy demands for wood fiber and wood residuals could lead to higher raw material costs. Yet, while it criticizes such subsidies, U.S. pulp and paper companies had no reservations in 2009-10 about taking millions in alternative fuels tax credits from the U.S Treasury and more millions doled out by the Farm Service Agency in administering the new Biomass Crop Assistance Program.
To some, the forest resource is an issue, and this has resulted in the domestic pulp and paper sector siding with the environmental community in Virginia and North Carolina. Both sides like to play the “it’s not sustainable” card. One paper company did so at a recent North Carolina Utility Commission hearing in which Duke Power sought approval to convert two coal-fired power plants to wood fuel. Interestingly, the company does not operate a plant of any type in North Carolina and never has. And for the record, from state legislative halls to county commission meetings, the pulp and paper lobby has been effective in limiting and/or thwarting various wood energy projects.
But concerns about the forest resource are generally unwarranted. Wood fiber is abundant in this country and the growth over drain is impressive. Today the U.S. consumes far less than it did in the mid 1990s, due largely to a significant pullback in wood fiber consumption by the pulp and paper sector. Credit consolidation, aging plants, global competition, the electronic media craze, a ramp-up in paper recycling, and ongoing economic anemia, among other reasons. The potential to grow even more fiber, on less land, is enormous. In fact, new markets tend to spur more tree planting and could lead to more intensive and more productive forestry practices.
Lost on so many in all of this is the crucial need for this nation to become more energy independent from both economic and national security standpoints. In an age of global economic anxiety, terrorist threats and nuclear saber rattling, one would think this would override other concerns and issues.
Wood is by no means the answer to national and international energy woes, but it has a place, and that place should be honored.