http://reports.climatecentral.org/pulp-fiction/3/
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Pulp Fiction
Wood Burning May Play Big Role In EPA’s New Rules
As the world tries to shift away from fossil fuels, the energy industry
is turning to what seems to be an endless supply of renewable energy:
wood. In England and across Europe, wood has become the renewable of
choice, with forests — many of them in the U.S. — being razed to help
feed surging demand. But as this five-month Climate Central
investigation reveals, renewable energy doesn’t necessarily mean clean
energy. Burning trees as fuel in power plants is heating the atmosphere
more quickly than coal.
Climate Central reporter John Upton traveled to England and through the
U.S. Southeast to investigate both ends of the global trade in wood
pellets, interviewing scientists, politicians, policy makers, activists,
workers and industry leaders. Europe has long been viewed as the
wellspring of climate action. But the loophole that’s promoting wood
burning is so overlooked, he discovered, that it’s unlikely to even be
raised during global climate treaty negotiations in Paris this December.
By John Upton
Oct. 22, 2015
DESCHUTES COUNTY, ORE. - More than 100 feet beneath the crowns of
arrow-straight pines, the forest floor around Peter Caligiuri was
overgrown. He pointed at clumps of trees taller than him, but so thin he
could have wrapped his hands around their trunks. Before the era of
modern firefighting, regular brush fires thinned out woodlands like
these. Now, with smaller wildfires kept at bay, small trees can
flourish, fueling fiercer blazes when forest fires inevitably arrive.
“The understory would have been occupied by a lot more native
vegetation; diverse vegetation,” said Caligiuri, a Nature Conservancy
forest ecologist working with other groups and the federal government to
restore forests around Bend — mostly by thinning them out. “What we’re
seeing here in central Oregon is emblematic of a lot of the problems
we’re seeing across the Intermountain West.”
Instead of leaving them to burn in forest fires, Oregon officials want
these skinny pines and other trees cut down and burned in power plants.
Wood is an increasingly popular source of energy in Europe, where it’s
richly subsidized. But wood energy can accelerate climate change. Living
trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and burning dead ones
releases more carbon dioxide than coal.
Oregon officials say burning waste wood and forest thinnings from its
large logging industry and forestlands would protect the climate, while
improving the natural environment. But their ambitions go beyond that.
The governor’s office wants to know whether the last coal plant in the
state could be converted to run on wood — a substantially riskier
proposition for the atmosphere.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to make critical
decisions about this kind of energy as it cracks down on power plant
pollution. Its decisions will affect how a fuel known as biomass — wood
and other organic material burned for energy — can be used by the states
to meet new pollution rules. In doing so, the agency will walk a fine
line between promoting the use of wood energy that could accelerate
deforestation and global warming, and defining the limited sources of
wood fuel that could help ease those problems.
The European Union makes no such distinction. Through a loophole in its
clean energy regulations, all wood energy is treated as if it releases
no carbon dioxide. That accounting trick is allowing European national
governments and their energy sectors to pump tens of millions of tons of
greenhouse gases into the air every year — without accounting for it.
That helps them keep that pollution off their books, but not out of the
atmosphere.
Burning wood only helps the climate in special circumstances, like when
waste is used for energy instead of being burned off in a field, or when
trees are planted on barren land to eventually produce fuel.
The EPA will decide which types of wood energy can count as clean energy
on a state-by-state basis. By letting states propose their own rules,
the federal government risks allowing Oregon, Virginia and other states
with large forestry industries to downplay the climate impacts of wood
energy as they devise their plans to reduce climate-warming pollution.
The Clean Power Plan — 1,560 pages of electricity rules finalized in
August by the EPA — represents an unprecedented effort by the U.S.
government to start forcing states to control climate pollution from
their power industries. Most states already allow wood burning to count
as renewable energy generation. The EPA will allow states to propose
increasing their use of wood energy to help meet the new greenhouse gas
reduction rules.
Wood energy is considered renewable because trees can regrow. But it’s
not a clean energy source like wind turbines or solar panels, which
convert energy from the environment to electricity. Wood is a fuel,
meaning it must be burned to produce electricity, which releases
pollution. Analysis of European data suggests that converting a modern
coal plant to run on wood pellets increases carbon dioxide pollution by
15 to 20 percent. And for power plants in Europe and parts of Asia that
are burning wood pellets (many of which are being produced in the U.S. —
all for export) for electricity, carbon pollution can be even greater,
because fuels are needed to produce and transport the pellets.
If the EPA is too lenient when it rules on plans submitted by Oregon and
the other states, that could threaten not only the climate, but
America’s forests.
Many of the wood pellets being burned for electricity in Europe were
made from trees chopped down in the U.S., including from sensitive
wetlands in the Southeast. Allowing this practice to grow could compound
the threat that it poses to some of the world’s most heavily logged areas.
The EPA has already hinted that Oregon’s hopes for burning waste wood
and forest thinnings could count toward pollution reductions under the
Clean Power Plan. That’s based on advice from a panel of scientists it
has convened. But it could be more than a year before states learn
whether industrial levels of wood burning are deemed acceptable — and,
if so, how.
“We would like to see bioenergy play a significant role in our efforts
to reduce carbon emissions,” said Margi Hoffman, Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown’s energy advisor. “We would like to see smaller-scale projects
listed as carbon neutral,” she said — while acknowledging that biomass
energy projects “of a certain size and scale” don’t meet that definition.
Fears ahead of the upcoming EPA ruling are rooted in more than 20 years
of climate research that warns wood energy can’t be used at large
industrial scales without harming the climate. Seas have risen more than
a half a foot since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Climate
change is making heat waves hotter and causing heavier downpours.
Pollution from wood energy compounds those problems.
“Biomass energy is going to be part of a mix of new forms of energy that
gets us off of fossil fuels,” said William Schlesinger, president
emeritus at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies whose research
frequently deals with climate change. Logging debris can safely be used
for energy, he said, and fast-growing grass and some plantation trees
will sometimes be “OK.”
But Schlesinger said cutting down old trees to fuel power plants — a
scenario that’s already playing out in the Southeast, where many of
Europe’s wood pellets are being produced — will exacerbate climate
change, the very problem for which wood energy is often pitched as a
solution. “There need to be some rules and regulations put into place
that trace the origin of biomass, so you can’t go out and cut an
old-growth forest and pelletize it and say, ‘That’s carbon neutral,’” he
said.
While forest-rich Oregon sees environmental wonder in burning waste wood
to provide electricity, Massachusetts sees the dangers of it. In 2012,
following the commissioning of a study into the potential climate and
forestry impacts of wood energy, Massachusetts adopted rules to limit
its use.
The different rules in Oregon and Massachusetts reflect their economic,
physical and political landscapes. The EPA is comfortable with that
diversity. It will allow states to set their own rules under the Clean
Power Plan. But it will wield a veto.
“It’s complicated,” said Robert Sussman, an energy industry consultant
and Yale Law School lecturer who was a senior advisor in the EPA from
2009 to 2013. “On the one hand, the EPA is saying that combustion of
biomass could be carbon neutral under certain circumstances. But then
it’s turning around and making the path for industry and the states
complex.”
Under the Clean Power Plan, states that want to use wood energy to meet
pollution targets must “adequately demonstrate” that the fuel they use —
be it wood chips, wood pellets, mill waste, almond shells or trees
killed by beetles, for example — will “appropriately control” increases
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Only wood-burning power plants
built after 2012 will be considered eligible.
The EPA’s panel of science advisors has agreed that some kinds of waste
wood can be burned to produce electricity — and benefit the climate at
the same time, said Joe Goffman, an EPA air official who helped draft
the new rules.
“We’ve opened up the door for states to submit plans that include some
kind of biomass component,” Goffman said. “If states include biomass as
a component in their plans, they can essentially present the case as to
why their approach is appropriate.”
Most states have standards in place that require utilities to include
renewable energy in their electricity supplies. The standards tend to
focus on promoting renewable energy — rather than reducing climate
pollution — and wood energy is a renewable alternative under these
rules. Under the EPA’s new power plant rules, states will also need to
start considering the climate effects of wood burning.
Massachusetts already does that out of concern for the climate and its
forests, limiting the types of wood that can count as renewable fuel
under its standards. Since 2012, its efficiency standards have been so
high that a wood-burning power plant would also have to heat buildings
to qualify.
In Virginia, which is home to a large forestry industry, the rules are
looser. Dominion Resources used investment tax credits, available from
the federal government, to help it switch three of its small coal plants
in Virginia to run on wood chips. It’s allowed to count that energy
toward its state renewables requirements. Each of the converted plants
produces about 50 megawatts of electricity — a typical size for a U.S.
biomass plant, capable of powering thousands of homes. Virginia’s power
regulators allowed the company to pass on more than $160 million in
costs to its bill-paying customers.
Dominion Resources doesn’t expect to convert its larger power plants to
run on wood to help meet Clean Power Plan requirements. Without access
to the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies that European
governments provide for renewable energy — virtually guaranteeing
profits for even the most expensive projects — large-scale wood burning
might not be feasible for American power plants. “The cost of converting
large pulverized coal units to biomass would be too high to consider,”
company spokesman Dan Genest said.
The EPA hasn’t said how it will decide whether a proposal to burn wood
for electricity would “appropriately control” rises in greenhouse gas
pollution. Its rulings will be crucial — both in reducing real-world
pollution and in setting an example to counter the destructive one being
set by Europe. The agency has so far made two broad statements: it won’t
treat all wood burning as carbon neutral, but waste as fuel may be
treated as such.
In a memo signed last year by senior EPA official Janet McCabe, the
agency indicated that it “expects to recognize” the climate benefits of
“waste-derived and certain forest-derived industrial byproduct
feedstocks.” It also said it may approve state plans that include the
burning of what it vaguely described as “sustainably derived
agricultural and forest-derived feedstocks.”
Those ambiguous statements have triggered consternation among scientists
and environmental groups. They wonder what “sustainably derived” will
mean. Sustainability can refer to environmental practices that have
“little-to-no bearing on the carbon implications of biomass use,” the
Cary Institute’s Schlesinger and dozens of other scientists wrote in a
letter to McCabe.
For some wood fuels, the agency may require states follow a new system
for measuring climate impacts.
“The EPA needs to set up a factor that they multiply by the smokestack
emissions,” said Oregon State University forest ecology professor Mark
Harmon, a member of the science panel that’s advising the agency on wood
energy’s climate effects. “What really counts? What really is being
added to the atmosphere — or maybe taken out of the atmosphere, in some
cases?”
Even when it helps the climate, wood energy isn’t all forest restoration
and atmospheric rainbows. Like fossil fuels, wood energy is dirty
energy. Burning wood releases pollution that creates haze and ozone,
triggering emphysema and asthma attacks. That’s why some local air
quality districts ban residents from using fireplaces on the smoggiest
days. Waste wood may also have been treated with pesticides, paint and
other poisons, which can be released as air pollution when burned.
Wood energy’s pollution, combined with its climate impacts and its
potential to contribute to deforestation, has seeded deep opposition to
it in the U.S.
When Oregon lawmakers were debating a bill that would eventually declare
wood energy to be carbon neutral, the Sierra Club’s state chapter
testified in opposition. Scientifically, the legislation was “deeply
flawed,” the group pointed out, warning it could accelerate climate
change and sully the air.
Power plant owners can take costly steps to reduce air pollution, but
those that burn wood have fewer regulatory requirements than those
burning fossil fuels. Among other differences, wood-burning power plants
can release more than twice as much pollution as coal or gas plants
before they’re affected by federal clean air rules.
“There are real public health impacts if you live next to one of these
facilities, and the facility isn’t run really well,” said Nathanael
Greene, director of renewable energy policy at the Natural Resources
Defense Council. The influential American nonprofit campaigns against
the overuse of wood energy, such as in Europe.
The potential role wood energy could play under the Clean Power Plan
won’t become clear until the EPA begins assessing state plans, which are
due next year. States could receive extensions for two years beyond
that. Meanwhile, the agency is consulting with its panel of scientists
and calling for public comment as it tries to hone its approach to
regulating pollution from wood energy.
The NRDC says the EPA is correct to conclude that wood energy is not
always carbon neutral. It says it will pressure the agency to be highly
critical of state proposals to count electricity from waste wood as zero
carbon under the Clean Power Plan.
“If you’re going to say that it’s zero carbon, it doesn’t just have to
control carbon a little bit — it’s got to control it all the way down to
being equal to wind power or solar power,” Greene said. “It’s unclear
from the final regulations how the EPA will determine if that standard
has been met.”
By potentially deferring to the judgment of Oregon, Virginia and other
states, the federal government risks allowing harmful types of wood
energy to be counted as clean. Momentum toward tackling global warming
is growing stronger around the world, led in part by the U.S., which is
striving to be a leader on climate action. Any mistakes now by the EPA
threaten to entrench the European approach and entice other countries to
follow, undermining global efforts to tackle climate change.
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