Biomass better than coal? War over carbon accounting erupts

In Washington, the Environment Working Group has released a study that claims the impacts of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA)—which has already passed the House of Representatives—would require the equivalent of cutting between 18 and 30 million acres by 2025, and up to 50 million acres by 2030.

“From Maine to Washington state, from Ohio to Florida,” the EWG report says, “electric utilities have been embracing “biomass power” as a way to reduce dependence on coal and other fossil fuels and to meet ambitious goals for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. And both state energy policies and the pending federal climate and energy legislation are designed to encourage the trend by providing huge incentives.

“The trouble is…the hoped-for reduction in emissions is illusory. In fact, carbon emissions from burning biomass at rates designed to meet renewable power goals will make it impossible to meet federal and state greenhouse gas reduction targets. Making things worse, the only realistic way to satisfy the expected appetite for biomass fuel would require cutting down the equivalent of more than 46,000 square miles of forest by 2025 – an area larger than Pennsylvania.”The Biomass Power Association responds that the study is misleading. BPA says they are not aware of any facilities that use whole trees for energy and that it is not an economically sustainable approach to biomass as the cost of cutting down one tree outweighs the potential energy benefits.

Bob Cleaves, president and CEO of Biomass Power Association (BPA), further challenged the report by saying that the tax credit and the investment tax credit passed by Congress last year are only available for waste wood products and other organic by-products and not merchantable timber.

Support for the BPA comes from the Manomet Center for Conservation Scientists, which took the extraordinary step of issuing a press release urging the media and environmentalists to read its report on Massachusetts’s biomass options before drawing conclusions.

“One commonly used press headline,” said the Manomet plea,”has been ‘wood worse than coal’ for GHG emissions or for ‘the environment.’ This is an inaccurate interpretation of our findings, which paint a much more complex picture. While burning wood does emit more GHGs initially than fossil fuels, these emissions are removed from the atmosphere as harvested forests re-grow. As discussed in more detail below, the timing and magnitude of the recovery is a function of forest productivity, land management choices, and technology and fuel characteristics.

The full Manomet statement is here.

The Manomet Executive Summary is here.

The EWG study is downloadable here

The controversy has to do with carbon accounting and the carbon neutrality of biomass. There is no question among the parties that carbon dioxide is released when biomass is combusted, and that new biomass growth will absorb that carbon – hence, the term carbon-neutral.

The controversy comes over how you account for, and how you weight the importance of, the time lag between combustion and new growth.

View #1. Those who view biomass as an existing carbon storage system will count the emissions first, and the carbon absorption second – leaving a “carbon debt” that can take a considerable amount of time to eliminate — by some accounting, decades.

View #2. Those who view biomass as a user of “forest slash” and other wood wastes consider that they are using waste resources that are not a stable carbon storage system – that wood waste would be left on forest floors or otherwise disposed, and carbon emissions would have occurred naturally in bacterial decomposition. By this accounting, you count the carbon absorption of new growth first, and the emissions second – because it is the second cycle of biomass growth that reflects the actual impact of a biomass industry. By this accounting approach, the carbon debt is far less intense.

The debate over carbon accounting standards is one for science, not petitions and ballot initiatives, where it can only descend into a series of simplistic sound bites that distract from the real challenges of developing a sustainable renewables industry.

The Manomet warning is apt: even the EWG, according to Manomet, is already sensationalizing and misreporting the Center’s findings. What hope is there that a ballot initiative will be about real issues.

Free Subscription to the Daily Biofuels Digest e-newsletter

Subscribe FREE to the world's most-widely read biofuels daily. Enter your email in the box below,

or click here to subscribe:

Related Stories