The proposed biomass plant will use pine needles, wood chips, logs, branches and trees collected as part of the basin-wide defensible space procedures to produce 1 to 3 megawatts of electricity per year. The project will also potentially provide heat to local public institutions.

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At issue: is burning biomass carbon-neutral, and are there other emissions associated with it that make biomass an unappealing alternative to the burning of fossil fuels.

“Biomass incinerators, wrongfully promoted as clean and green under various proposed energy and climate bills, will make Americans sick, destroy our forests, dry up our rivers, and pollute the air,” writes Patricia Charles, who also acts as a public relations consultant to biofuel companies such as Qteros.

According to the Campaign, “Recent science has destroyed the myth that biomass burning is “carbon neutral” – the erroneous assumption that lets biomass get the same subsidies as clean energy sources that don’t have smokestacks belching pollution 24/7/365.”

At issue: carbon debt

The problem of carbon neutrality, and the theory of carbon debt are simply explained: when harvesting biomass, the biomass process releases stored carbon in the form of direct emissions (through burning), and also releases emissions in the form of energy applied to grow and harvest biomass. Though re-growth will eventually re-absorb the direct emissions in the form of new growth, there is a time lag, and that lag is presented as a “carbon debt”.

And, how is carbon counted?

For example, if we count carbon storage first and carbon release afterwards, then direct emissions are simply returning carbon to the atmosphere that have already been sequestered. By this method, we have a carbon surplus during the period that biomass is growing, and the balance returns to zero when the biomass is burned.

Here’s the other way to count.

We can count the biomass emissions first, and then consider that the biomass re-growth is restoring the stored carbon that was emitted when it was burned. By this method, we have a carbon debt during the period when the biomass is growing, and the balance returns to zero when the biomass is fully grown.

It’s a semantic point, and feels like a wonky debate. But this distinction has been used by the green left-wing to derail biomass legislation in Massachusetts. According to the Campaign, “Massachusetts is changing its laws, and the activists urged Congress to use Massachusetts law as a template and require proper accounting of the massive CO2 emissions generated from biomass incineration.”

So it’s a material issue. Broadly, there would be agreement that first growth forest or prairie would represent a stored carbon resource where emissions would be counted first, regrowth second, and a carbon debt would be incurred.

But, with second growth forest or cultivated land, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. On the green right-wing, the argument is that biomass growth should be counted first, and emissions second – so that the burning of biomass is working down a cyclical surplus, not creating a debt.

Crisis in the Evergreen State

Ironically, the front lines appeared to be manned in Washington state, the “Evergreen state”, and at Evergreen State College, one of the most liberal colleges in the country. A president of the institution, back in the 1970s, Dan Evans, was the founder (when Washington state governor) of the first state-level Department of Ecology, and that Department served as a blueprint for the original design of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ironies abound.

On the green left, the No Biomass Burn group, led by Seattle environmental activist and occasional gubernatorial candidate, Duff Badgley, who in recent years has been often spotted protesting against biodiesel at Propel Biofuels stations around the city. According to a report in the Seattle Times, the group contends that “the college biomass project would emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the gas-fired plant, and 20 percent more of other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and carbon monoxide.

On the green right, professor Rob Cole told the Times that “As long as the wood waste used by Evergreen is replenished in the forest, the net effect is that carbon released in the atmosphere is equal to the carbon stored in the trees.” College facilitiess director Paul Smith also told the Times that the No Biomass Group had not waited for the feasibility report to come out before protesting against the project, and predicted that the scientific assessment would show that biomass non-carbon emissions would be less harmful than those from natural gas.

What is a material carbon debt?

No matter in which order the various critics and proponents of biomass incineration count the emissions, there is the problem of defining what a material carbon debt, in fact, is, and how to model long term carbon-storing strategies.

As the Digest reported in “Fuzzy Math: 6th Most Overlooked Biofuels Story of 2010“: “The lesson for policymakers,” we quoted an Iowa State research team in Chicken Little, Corn Little, Jatropha Little: Is the Sky Really Falling? , “is that results from economic models depend heavily on assumptions, and because we are trying to predict long-run human behavior, there can be legitimate differences in these assumptions.” In its February article, the Digest revealed that simply assuming a one percent increase in corn yields per decade, reduced a projected carbon debt by 80 percent, and increasing yields by one percent per year (as they are currently increasing now), the carbon debt is virtually wiped out.

Meanwhile, the National Anti-Biomass Incineration and Forest Protection Campaign contends that “that the Senate and House energy and farm bills, and proposed federal Renewable Electricity Standards, include dirty energy made from incinerators that burn trees and garbage for falsely labeled “clean energy.” They also told Congress that Senator Wyden’s forest bill and others promoting more logging of our nation’s forests for fuel for these incinerators will destroy our carbon-absorbing forests, leading to more global warming.”

One potato, two potato

Who’s right? The central issue is the counting order of emissions and re-growth. As any child or grow-up veteran of schoolyard counting games like “one potato, two potato” will tell you, it all comes down to a question of where the counts starts.

If the count starts where you like it, you’re in. If it starts where you don’t, you’re out. Though biomass producers often busy themselves with the business of renewables, it may be time to not only stand up and be counted, but to ensure that the counting is done in an appropriate order.

According to the agreement, Vista will have an exclusive license to use Emerald Energy’s proprietary MegaFlora tree in Biomass-to-Energy projects in the Western Hemisphere, and will have the right of first refusal on any new territories where Biomass-to-Energy projects using Emerald’s technology may be built in the future.

MegaFlora trees are ideal for Biomass-to-Energy projects due to their hardiness, high-density wood and rapid growth. The trees have no invasive characteristics, have low water requirements, and can be harvested for biomass in only three years, compared to ten or more for most other hardwood feedstocks.

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The legislation would provide $800,000 for the Tri-County Biomass Pilot Project, which would use woody biomass produced in Lewis and Clark, Jefferson and Broadwater counties to create renewable energy for the city of Helena. The three counties yield about 350,000 tons of biomass a year from sources including dead trees.

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The two companies have signed a Strategic Development and Partnership agreement, which Viridas is expecting to result in a sustainable biomass offtake deal. The company said that it now has potential revenues worth up to $1 billion over a ten-year period.

This new plant would require about 50 percent more wood than NewPage already burns at its mill in Port Hawkesbury. The Company plans to compensate by securing 25 per cent from waste at the paper mill and another 25 per cent from bark and chips sourced from sawmills. The remaining 50 per cent would come from forest trees, from both private woodlots and government-owned land.

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The plant, located in Tuas, is able to recycle over half of Singapore’s food waste and process up to 800 tons of organic waste per day, generating up to 10MW of electricity.

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According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, it will “grandfather” its backing for anaerobic digestion and energy-to-waste plants, as it does for other renewables, instead of subjecting it to review every four years. The government also extended its support to all fuel costs for biomass developers, which were not initially included.

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Our goal in San Francisco: to address the near-term, immediate steps towards commercialization of bioenergy, including a special series of presentations and dialogue on renewable chemicals, plastics, organic acids and other bio-based materials.

We’ll also have strategic investors, Administration officials and venture capitalists on hand, as well as CEOs to partner with in feedstocks, processing technology and downstream marketing.

Among the speakers:

Bill Haywood, CEO LS9

Bill Sims, CEO, Joule Unlimited

Jim Imbler, CEO, Zeachem

Eric McAfee, CEO, AE Biofuels

John McCarthy, CEO, Qteros

Kirk Haney, CEO, SG Biofuels

Jack Oswald, CEO, SynGest

Hunt Ramsbottom, CEO Rentech

John Scott, CEO, PetroAlgae

Alan Shaw, CEO, Codexis

Richard Hamilton, CEO, Ceres

Wayne Simmons, CEO, Sundrop Fuels

Atul Thakrar, CEO, Segetis

Rick Wilson, CEO, Cobalt Technologies

Jonathan Wolfson, CEO, Solazyme

Tim Potter, CEO, Butamax

John Hamer, Managing Director, Burrill and Company

Tom Baruch, Founder, CMEA Capital

Bill Hagy, Director of Alternative Energy Policy, USDA

Tim Cesarak, MD, Organic Growth Group, Waste Management

Dan Adler, President, California Clean Energy Fund.

The conference agenda is here.

More information on Sponsorship & exhibition opportunities can be found here.

Executive Director of Sustain Charlotte, Shannon Binns: “We need to ask ourselves whether these tax credits, which are intended to attract investment in clean sources of renewable energy were intended for projects that bring new smokestacks and additional sources of air pollution to our communities, especially communities like ours that are already unable to meet federal air quality requirements.”