Irresponsible Article on Biomass

Scott Nichols, president of Tarm USA (Tarm Biomass), reacts to a Seattle Times article published in our local newspaper.
Below is the original article. After the letter, is Scott’s Letter to the Editor. Please feel free to post any comments that you may have.

New studies raise doubts about greenness of biomass

By Kyung M. Song
Seattle Times Washington bureau

 

WASHINGTON — Simpson Tacoma Kraft would seem like one of the greener power plants. It boils water by burning sawdust, bark and wood shavings from saw mills and pulp mills, funneling the resulting high-pressure steam into a turbine to generate electricity.

Such power produced from biomass — tree trimmings, scrap lumber and other plant material — is a small but growing part of the nation’s quest for renewable energy. The goal is to curb demand for imported oil by supplanting coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels and to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for altering the climate.

The technology enjoys wide political support and public subsidies at least in part because of the belief that it is carbon neutral. That is, carbon dioxide released from burning wood is equivalent to the amount of carbon absorbed during the tree’s growth.

But new, sophisticated calculations are casting doubts on the merits of biomass-produced power. Some researchers have concluded that, when it comes to carbon dioxide, biomass could be more polluting — at least in the short term — than coal, and much worse than natural gas. Burning biomass is dirtier at the outset, they argue, and recouping that higher initial release of carbon could take years or even decades of forest growth.

“It’s hard to imagine a more polluting and less efficient alternative source of energy than biomass,” said Richard Wiles, former co-founder of Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

Biomass supporters dismiss that contention, noting wood emits the same amount of carbon whether it’s burned or left to decay in the forest. The net change in atmospheric carbon dioxide, they say, is zero.

Yet, doubts about carbon neutrality could well alter the future of the biomass industry in Washington state and elsewhere. Thanks to its forests, the state is among the nation’s largest producers of biomass power, generating enough to meet electricity demands of Tacoma and Spokane.

A dozen plants, all located in Western Washington except for two, produce power from wood byproducts from mills and forest waste. Four proposed projects are waiting to join the grid — provided they can overcome regulatory hurdles and legal opposition from environmentalists.

Challenges to biomass’ “clean” credentials also could pose policy repercussions. Since taking office in 2009, state Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark has made pursuit of biomass energy a signature initiative. Gov. Chris Gregoire and Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray also are strong proponents.

Taxpayers, too, hold a stake. That’s by virtue of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and federal grants for biomass projects, along with an estimated 14,000 biomass jobs across the nation.

Two main complaints

Although carbon math is complex, critics level two main strikes against biomass.

First, because of its high moisture, wood yields less energy compared with more efficient fuels. Generating the same amount of electricity from biomass emits 45 percent more carbon dioxide than coal and almost 300 percent more than an efficient natural-gas power plant, according to a 2010 study by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, a nonprofit environmental research organization. The study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.

Second, burning biomass releases carbon dioxide instantly, while repaying that carbon debt through new tree growth takes years. Just how long depends on many factors, including the biomass source, what was done with it before and the fossil fuel it displaces.

Replacing coal-fired electricity by burning tree tops and other wood waste, for instance, might take 10 years to recoup the carbon, said Thomas Walker, a resource economist and team leader of the Manomet study. But if whole trees were harvested for feedstock — something the industry says it doesn’t do — and the resulting electricity replaced cleaner-burning natural gas, Walker said, payback might take a century.

The timing matters because the nation has pledged to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and dramatically more in subsequent decades.

“The interesting question is how much bioenergy do you want to promote from systems that have greater short-term potential to increase greenhouse gases?” Walker said.

Double counting?

The clashing views on biomass went on display in January when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided to punt on the question of whether biomass boilers would be required to account for their carbon emissions the same way as other polluters. The agency decided to exempt biomass for three years, reversing its position from a year earlier.

Some health groups, in addition, worry about other gases and chemicals emitted from burning biomass, including sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide and dioxin.

Rick Gustafson, a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Forest Resources, criticized the EPA’s earlier decision to treat biomass and fossil fuels under the same emissions rules.

Gustafson acknowledges carbon benefits of biomass could take years to accrue. Yet, carbon from biomass fundamentally pays for itself as long as standing trees aren’t being depleted, he said.

“If the forest is growing,” Gustafson said, “it has to be carbon neutral.”

But Mark Harmon, a climate researcher at Oregon State University, said forests in the Northern Hemisphere on balance are always expanding. So crediting biomass for carbon sequestered in new trees amounts to double counting, he contends.

Harmon said he believes biomass has the potential to worsen climate change for years before it helps. While some debris from logging is burned deliberately, much of it is left to decompose slowly.

“If your investment doesn’t pay off in your lifetime,” Harmon said, “that really isn’t helping very much. We need to solve this in the next 20 years. Fifty years will be too late.”

Goldmark, the public-lands commissioner, said his aggressive push for biomass energy has myriad reasons. They include combating global warming, raising revenue from selling logging waste and thinning forests to avert wildfires.

Nonetheless, he earlier this month weighed in against what would have been the largest free-standing biomass facility in Washington, the Adage plant in Shelton. In a letter to the Mason County Board of Commissioners, Goldmark questioned the $250 million project’s viability, saying it would require more wood waste to operate than could be had from a reasonable hauling distance.

Shortage of feedstock could force biomass plants to harvest trees just for fuel. The industry says it doesn’t do that, although critics say some plants do burn whole-tree chips as well as trees that are unsuited for lumber or pulp.

Duke Energy and Areva, Adage’s joint partners, dropped plans for the Shelton plant on March 13, citing a weak market for renewable energy.

Tax credits in place

As an alternative to fossil fuels, biomass enjoys heavy public subsidies.

Federal tax credits, for instance, cover 30 percent of the eligible cost of a new project. And biomass harvesters in Washington receive a state business tax credit of $3 per ton. That’s slated to go up to $5 per ton in July 2013.

Bob Cleaves, president of the Biomass Power Association, a trade group, called the subsidies critical, adding he does not know if the industry could sustain itself without public assistance.

For Simpson Tacoma Kraft, the federal tax credit alone covered $17 million of the company’s $90 million-plus tab to convert the plant to produce biomass electricity.

Simpson has been burning biomass since the 1920s, generating steam to manufacture shipping boxes and containers. Thanks to the 2009 expansion, Simpson now takes that steam and generates 40 megawatts of electricity, allowing the plant to become largely energy self-sufficient, said Dave McEntee, vice president of Simpson Investment, a privately held Tacoma firm that owns the mill.

But because biomass power fetches a premium in the open market, where many utilities must meet quotas on using renewable energy, Simpson sells its electricity to California and replaces it with lower-cost power from the city of Tacoma.

McEntee said Simpson would not have converted the plant without the reliable supply of wood waste from its adjacent saw mill and other operators around Tacoma. That, coupled with tax credits and market premiums for biomass power, has proved Simpson’s investment a smart bet, McEntee said.
“In my view, what we do is biomass done right,” he said.
Seattle Times news researcher David Turim contributed to this report.
Kyung Song: 202-662-7455 or ksong@seattletimes.com

Scott Nichol’s Letter to the Editor:

Irresponsible Article on Biomass

To the editor:

On Sunday March 27 in the Business and Money section, your paper printed an article about electric power produced from biomass, “New Studies Say Biomass Isn’t As Green As Hoped”. Bold, but misleading, this title is followed by an article that is so poorly researched or at very least, written, as to be irresponsible. The author has attempted to dive deeply into a complicated subject, but has only provided the reader with a shallow and disjointed explanation of the topic at hand. Unfortunately, the average reader would never know that the studies that Ms. Song quotes in her article consist of hundreds of pages, but Ms. Song has taken the liberty of piecing together tiny bits, taken out of context into one article. The authors of the “Manomet Study” that Ms. Song cites as though the study applies country wide, or even to her home ground of Washington State, have time and again tried to remind the public that their study was only intended for use in Massachusetts – and for important reasons. While I agree that biomass to power conversion remains a questionable use of biomass resources, there is much to be learned about relative advantages and disadvantages of biomass as fuel for the purpose of power production.

More importantly, the Valley News chose to highlight a quote,

“It’s hard to imagine a more polluting and less efficient source of energy than biomass.”

This quote unfairly stigmatizes and generalizes about all biomass uses. When biomass is used to produce space heat, hot water, process heat, is used in combined heat and power applications it has a much shorter carbon cycle than when used in power production. Primarily this is due to the fact that modern thermal uses of biomass achieve 80% or higher total efficiency as compared to about 30% efficiency when biomass is used in power production. Biomass used in efficient thermal applications has never been successfully challenged with regard to being a low carbon energy source. Furthermore, modern biomass combustion systems produce a virtually clear exhaust consisting of few particulates composed of low toxicity inorganic salts. Nearly all heating dollars spent on petroleum fuels leave this region and our country. Dollars spent on biomass stay home. Biomass used in thermal applications is also about the only unsubsidized energy source we have in this country. Dragging all uses of biomass through the mud is detrimental to energy progress.

Scott Nichols
President, Tarm USA, Inc.
Lyme, NH