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Burn Up the Biosphere and Call It Renewable Energy: The New Taxpayer Bailout That Will Make You Sick AND Poor
Just when you thought the biofuels bad dream was about over along comes the nightmare of "biomass."
Last week President Obama announced his plans to ensure that the mandate for biofuels, 36 billion gallons by 2022, voted into law in the Energy Independence and Security Act in 2007, is met, and to provide huge new supports through the USDA for the cutting, harvesting and transport of biomass (aka forests, plants) to be delivered to incinerators and burned as "renewable" electricity and heat.
The transportation biofuel mandate was adopted without clear consideration of the impacts of production on food, public health, direct and indirect land use, greenhouse gas emissions, soils, water or biodiversity. Since being passed into law, the critique of biofuels, particularly corn ethanol, has only grown deeper and more damning. Cellulosic fuels, not much available yet, will, according to mythology, avert these concerns because they are made from the inedible parts of plants. True, we do not eat forests, but creating huge new demands for wood is a recipe for disaster.
Lucky, technological hurdles have slowed the development of cellulosic fuels, but no such hurdles lie in the way of burning biomass for electricity and heat. Across the country, communities are being offered "green jobs" cutting, hauling and chipping their forests to feed the gaping maws of a new generation of "green energy" utilities being constructed or retrofitted in their neighborhoods. At least 200 new burners are proposed around the country. Further, many facilities that burn coal are seeking to co-fire biomass under the assumption that burning trees is a step up from burning coal. It's not.
To fully appreciate the magnitude of this race to burn up the biosphere, consider the scale - each demands on the order of 13 thousand tons of wood per year, delivered by a stream of diesel-fueled trucks, to produce one megawatt of electricity. According to the Energy Information Agency, in 2007 The U.S. produced 4348856 GWh of electricity. If we were to produce 10% of our electricity with biomass, my back of the envelope calculation suggests we would need about 760 million tons of wood. At a moderate harvest rate (20 tons per acre), that would mean cutting an area approximately the size of Florida each year. The impacts on air quality and human health from burning it would be staggering.
States like Massachussetts, where the community resistance has brought these figures to light, are facing 5 proposed new facilities which combined would produce 135-200 MW, an increase of a mere 1.3% in generating capacity for the state. This would require over 2 million tons of wood -- requiring cutting over the entire 844 thousand acres of public and private forest land in the state within 6 years. Similar outrageous proposals are on the table in virtually every state in the nation.
These demands are on a collision course with fast rising new industries producing pellets and chips for export, especially to the EU, where even larger biomass burners are being constructed, (120- 300 Megawatts), requiring millions of tons per year, largely imported!
It gets worse: there is a direct connection with the recent news that Arborgen is seeking to test genetically engineered eucalyptus in the U.S. (see NYT Jan 29) The greater the demand for biomass, the greater the likelihood that GE trees will gain a toehold and native forests will give way to industrial plantations of GE trees.
In communities where biomass burners are being proposed, often poor and hard pressed for job opportunities, citizens are waking to the realities: First of all, the promised "green jobs" are not as numerous or as lucrative as hoped. Further, the emissions from biomass burning are making it increasingly difficult to breathe! A number of medical professionals and associations have opposed biomass burning, pointing out that it results in large quantities of particulate matter, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxin. For some contaminants, biomass emits more than coal. Biomass is often loosely defined to include not just wood, but also garbage, construction debris, tires, manure and much much more -- all of which contribute further to the stew of airborne (and ash-borne) toxins from incineration. Community organizers are not standing by idly. This week in Scotsburg Indiana, over 800 angry citizens crammed a meeting of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to voice opposition to the incinerator proposed by "Liberty Green". In Gretna Florida, a standing room only crowd showed up to oppose an ADAGE proposed incinerator -- the county commission had earlier voted to remove cameras from the meeting hall after their meeting was "disrupted" by angry citizens. In Massachussetts citizens have pulled together a town wide election to overturn the town board's vote to sell wastewater to cool the turbines of a biomass incinerator. In Michigan, a newly formed community group is rapidly pulling together to oppose several new biomass burners proposed for the state. People are not stupid.
We have been sold this entire "burning biomass as renewable energy" bill of goods on the assumption that burning wood (or other) is a step up from burning coal or other fossil fuels. The argument is that trees grow back (which is true, but ignores the consequences of soils becoming depleted, compacted and eroded). When they grow back, in theory they reabsorb the same amount of CO2 released when they were burned. Unfortunately, this argument is flat out wrong, as recently detailed in an article published in Science entitled "Fixing A Critical Climate Accounting Error." The greenhouse gas emissions associated with cutting forest are considerable (which is why climate negotiations have spent massive time debating mechanisms for "reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, or REDD). Those emissions can be counted at the cut, harvest and haul stage, or they can be measured at the smoke stack. But they must be counted because they do in fact exist! Unfortunately, under current policies, in renewable energy "lore", these emissions are ignored on all fronts and the "myth of carbon neutrality" is perpetuated. Based on figures from the Department of Energy, if the U.S. adopts a 20% renewable portfolio standard, by 2020 over 11% of our emissions would come from biomass burning, all uncounted, magically invisible and mistakenly rewarded.
Right now, virtually every policy intended to support renewable energy, here and around the globe, is resulting in massive new funding, subsidies and mandates to cut and burn more forests. In Europe, about two-thirds of "renewable energy" is from biomass burning, accounting for nearly 80% of growth in renewables from 1990-2005. In the U.S. more than twice as much "renewable energy" is produced from biomass as from wind and solar combined. In sum, when we support the development of renewable energy, we are mostly supporting the burning of the biosphere.
When Barack Obama tells us he wants to provide further supports for renewable energy, rather than blindly cheering, we should take to the streets screaming in outrage! Our tax dollars, via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are being used to pay up to 30% of capital costs for building biomass burners -- a great deal for the industry that could cost us up to about 8 billion. An additional 450-850 million similarly goes to support biomass burning via the USDA "Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which will pay growers, cutters and harvesters for providing the massive quantities of biomass. A production tax credit -- nearly a billion per year is up for reauthorization -- and this is just the tip of the subsidy iceberg. In sum, we are footing the bill with close to 10 billion per year of our tax dollars, to have our forests and farmlands pillaged and our health compromised under the guise of "renewable energy". Time to rethink the meaning of "renewable," and fast before every last scrap of living plant matter on earth goes up in smoke.
Deeply ironic is the fact that as this disaster is unfolding, separate channels are developing policies and incentives for marketing forest and agricultural lands carbon sequestration as part of the scheme for "offsets". The Peterson amendment to the American Clean Energy and Security Act is case in point -- over 2 billion tons of carbon offsets -- almost entirely from forests and farms. This is called "having your cake and eating it too". If we want to enjoy the benefits of carbon sequestering ecosystems, (but hopefully not as an excuse for ongoing pollution as offsets do!), then we cannot also rely on those forests and farms to provide every twig and leaf and branch and scrap of "residue" to fuel a faux-green "bioeceonomy". Time for a reality check: what is nature for, anyway?
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27 Comments so far
Show AllSomebody needs to learn to differentiate between the good biofuels and the bad ones. Corn and wood are not good biofuels but weed and alcohol are great biofuels that won't cause global warming. Why don't the biofuel opponents get it?
Maybe you should read the article again. There is no "carbon neutrality" in biofuels. There is considerable air (and in the cutting water) pollution even with plant scrubbers in the harvesting. You can't grow enough biofuel to make a spits worth of difference with our GROWING energy needs.
I liked the hemp idea though for local and small-scale projects, as long as their are scrubbers on the emissions from the plants burning the natural oil produced by this wonderful crop. Ditto vehicles. Very pretty as well (opps, how'd I know that?).
Gary
“I do support the cause, but not enough because I don't buy hemp products. I don't have anything hemp. I guess what we are trying to say here is 'Wake up!' Rock's the only way to solve it. Rock's the only way to bring hemp to the masses, not drum circles.”
-- Aaron Baker
No biofuel is completely carbon neutral but some crops emit less carbon than others when used as sources of fuel. Someone here mentioned cannabis as an alternative crop. If it emits significantly less carbon than corn or wood, then it should be tested.
And nobody in the area would care anyway.
Joe
ALL burning of carbon-based substances releases CO2 into the air. It is the absolutely inescapable chemical result of oxidizing (burning) carbon. As the article mentions, there may be other toxic byproducts as well.
Exactly what is it that we need to learn?
Joe
An obvious substitute for forests would be cannabis, the most efficient producer of biomass on land. Homeowners could be encouraged to grow cannabis, diverting resources currently used to grow lawns, instead of those currently used to grow food, to grow a plant indistinguishable from a common hedge that could provide an income of $10,000 per year to each homeowner.
Burning any sort of biomass, however, requires the development of associated systems to remove pollutants and particles from the associated smoke. Similar systems are already in place for power generation using other fuels and there is no reason why the technology could not be tailored to address the problems of burning biofuels.
There is no amount of biofuels feed stock in the world (or throughout) that will supply fuel for millions (let alone billions) of personal autos and the trucking industry period.
See http://oregonstate.edu/media/ccrghs from IPCC Member Professor Steven Running describing the totals that could be produced by taking every acre of forest and agriculture land worldwide for biofuels production. I think he says something like 10% of the current demand might be met.
Make alcohol to cook with and a little for beverage.
Use land for growing food and the forests to sequester carbon and harbor biodiversity period.
I beleive that the big push to create this biofuels infrastructure is about supplying the military IC when they declare martial law to control mass uprising in the homeland when there isn't enough petrol left for personal autos or perhaps even to transport food across the nation. The fuel for the MIC and the elite will trump peoples needing to go to work in their own autombile for sure.
The Soylent green world is coming fast.
Thank you Rachel.
We've been trying to fight this emerging nightmare in the NW for at least 3.5 years now and people are starting to get it but I hope it won't be too late to stop this insanity of building this forest destroying infrastructure.
Substituting biomass for coal is just another way to prop up the obsolete grid. Only a fraction of the energy potential of any fuel arrives at the Service Entrance Panel of your home as usable energy.
Any generation process that requires fuel to be burned to produce steam to drive turbines/dynamos is inherently ineficient. But not nearly as ineficient as pushing that generated electricity hundreds of miles through wires.
It is the grid itself that needs massive amounts of energy, not the end user. The end user can adapt and reduce, the grid cannot.
No, I do not offer any statistics here. The entrenched energy interests once again have dictated the terms of the debate. We are supposed to unquestioningly agree that "our energy needs will continue to GROW in the future."
Once you accept that "truism" you have already lost the argument.
I see in the author's bio that she committed civil disobedience to protest her dad's organization, the Environmental Defense Fund, and its selling out to corporate polluters. I commend her courage, and her willingness to bear witness to the truth, despite the personal cost that it must have involved for her.
Good article but as Kyle said, it misses the fact that there are better biofuel alternatives to corn and wood. Hemp is great but the War on Drugs and the fact that most vehicles can't do diesel puts that out of reach. My favorite is switchgrass fuel.
Biofuels from Switchgrass Offer 540 Percent Return on Energy Inputs
http://www.naturalnews.com/023423.html
Bet I know why her given name is Rachel...
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Yes, "...when they declare martial law to control mass uprising..."
Where one awareness is the second awareness is already there.
They are few, we are millions.
Knowledge is power. The power of thoughts is immeasurable.
From the article;
“This would require over 2 million tons of wood -- requiring cutting over the entire 844 thousand acres of public and private forest land in the state within 6 years. Similar outrageous proposals are on the table in virtually every state in the nation.”
But, but, but, this is the same economic model that was used to develop the corn, corn, corn, from ethanol, ethanol, ethanol industry. VeraSun, the second largest producer of ethanol, ethanol, ethanol from corn went bankrupt in Oct. 2008. Today most, most, most of VeraSun’s ethanol plants are sitting idle, idle, idle. They were sold, sold, sold, by the bankruptcy judge for fifty cent, fifty cent, fifty cents on the dollar of what it cost, cost cost to build them.
America’s corporations demand the right to be brain dead stupid, stupid, stupid and to refuse to learn from mistakes that were committed only, only, five, five years ago.
Actually, some of the details in the article are hard to understand. It is as though it were hastily written and then quickly published with no serious editing.
Nevertheless, this is a real eye opener. A brief compendium on the varieties of devastation that come with "biofuels," "biomass," etc. It raises so many issues that it is hard to know where to begin to offer any solutions.
As I read it and the replies, an expression came into my thoughts: "forests are Gaia's hair." They keep the wind off her back.
People don't think enough about what forests do in atmospheric terms. Strip the Hoosier National Forest of its trees (and there is an underground industry doing just that!) and southeastern Indiana could be a very windy desert in thirty years. Likewise, anyone who thinks "mountaintop removal" coal mining isn't changing the weather in Washington D.C. is ignorant.
I guess that I am saying we should be reforesting, not deforesting.
Also, the suggestion that I think someone made earlier---to replace lawns with hemp---is actually a good idea, but it would require a huge shift in "middle class consciousness." Meanwhile, the "lawn care" industry today is huge, and a major greenhouse polluter (and as Paul Craig Roberts has observed, one of the few sources of income that cannot be offshored!).
To be fair, though, hemp is by no means the only crop that could replace lawns. I'm thinking of today's suburbia, which future historians will write theses about, trying to divine the source of the insanity. They might start with the history of General Motors and Ford. And of course the oil companies that fueled them. Ironic, eh, that as our military invade oil-rich Iraq, General Motors goes "bankrupt"?
If this article is any indication, and it probably is, we are on a slide toward energy hysteria. The guvment subsidies to biofuels (esp. corn) are an outrage. They should have gone to solar, wind, geothermal, etc. It is the front-end costs of these alternate "energy capture" technologies---versus "fuel consuming"---that is the real economic issue, and while several European and Asian governments have produced consistent policies towards their development, this country remains abjectly corrupt and self-indulgent.
Where I live, a lot of people heat their homes with trees. We need a better way and we need it soon.
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Solar, wind, and geothermal still require burning fossil fuels to manufacture them. Government should have given subsidization to conservation and energy efficient efforts which would have cost less. I believe Europe has been doing this.
Stop the Biomass souls! Solar-panel powered cars and homes, instead. Go to the SUN before this decade's done!!
Hemp grows 15 feet per year and can be replanted year after year with minimal effects on soil quality. A pine forest would require 20 years to mature and 20 more years to be ready for a second harvest. Hemp produces 5 times the biomass per acre compared to pine because the plants can survive closer to one another. The same biomass produced from one acre of hemp in two years would require 5 acres and 40 years. Hemp could be replanted and harvested annually at the same location, presumably close to the incinerator, thus reducing the energy needed to actually transport the biomass. It would probably not casue the cost of lumber to skyrocket either.
Thanks to Ms Smolker for citing the Science article entitled "Fixing A Critical Climate Accounting Error." Their re-evaluation is a an important critique with which all climate activists should be conversant.
When it comes to magical thinking on climate change, the All-American Fun just never stops.
Harvesting biofuels and carrying them to incinerators is "energy intensive" itself.
The only source of renewable energy which requires no cost for transportation is stored in the troposphere and is called Convective Available Potential Energy, CAPE. see tornadochaser.net/capeclass.html
A fraction of CAPE can be converted to electrical energy by having it converge into the bottom of an Atmospheric Vortex Engine, which resembles one of those hyperbolic cooling towers that are seen at nuclear plants (but less than half as tall).
A buoyant vortex rises from it that may extend five or more miles into the air. The plume creates a "draft" which pulls more air through behind it, and allows windmills on the ground to harvest the energy.
By harvesting CAPE, instead of biofuels, more land can be allowed to return to its natural state, creating new permanent growth to absorb carbon from the air.
see vortexengine.ca
The most popular biofuel in this neck of the woods is algae slurry from garbage and doing a 99.999% oxidation.
Why is the focus always on the supply side? What happened to conservation? Demand side management? Why not *drastically* cut down on all non-essential consumption, starting with the Super Bowl, NASCAR, etc.? An unbelievable amount of energy is wasted on this kind of "entertainment" - in the form of electricity and hydrocarbon fuels. At the venues and for the televisions. And stop using things like the treadmill when the weather is good outside. Go for a walk or a jog outside, instead. Why hang on to mistakes and monstrosities that only came about within the last 100 or so years, as if life cannot exist without them? And while we are at it, maybe some of the luxuries of the rich that clearly have a large ecological (including carbon) footprint can be suspended indefinitely until things go back to 'normal'.
These are only some of the things that people can *STOP* doing. There are other things that they can *START* doing - such as increasing the share of public transportation, switching to a largely vegan diet, etc. And make sure whatever renewable energy source is used, is not at the expense of existing green cover. And any new source should be a replacement for a fossil-fuel based or a nuclear-powered source that is in use, and *not* an additional capacity. Sometimes slow, thoughtful action or even *no action* is better than fast, but wrong action.
the world worked better before humans messed with it...'unmessing', rather than more messing, would seem to be the good idea...
Any and all resistance to this will have to come from outside government.
Alcyon writes:
"Why not *drastically* cut down on all non-essential consumption, starting with the Super Bowl, NASCAR, etc.?"
How about starting with airlines, which are used primarily by the rich and are non-essential intense generators of toxics. Then three-quarters of the military, which is in essence its own toxic waste dump.
Our circuses are miniscule by comparison. We need our circuses, don't you know.
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I have no problem with drastically cutting down on flying - such as for vacations. These days, vacations in exotic locations are not just for the rich - it seems - judging by the advertisements. I know the rich have a much larger footprint - I mentioned that in my post too. As for complete stopping of all flights, I'm not sure - at this point in time - primarily from humanitarian considerations.
To say that you need your circuses doesn't sound like a good argument - especially when we are talking of *ALL* non-essential activities that have a large ecological and carbon footprint. If you trace the entire cycle of what it takes to have such entertainment - if you see that a portion of the oil and coal is used for such activities, too, as is the military expenditure, I'm not sure if you'll still insist on these - which didn't exist about a 100 or so years ago, anyway.
Alcyon---
Who defines "nonessential"?
There is retrospective "non-essential" such that we might question whether Woodstock was historically "non-essential." There is present "non-essential" such as deciding to go to Wal*Mart to buy everything today and save a few pennies or to stop by 3 different stores to buy the same things and spend more while fighting the monopoly. Then there is prospective "non-essential." That's the really hard choice.
Stalingrad, winter, 1943. They burned all the suddenly "non-essential" furniture to defend the city from Hitler's invasion. History was changed forever.
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OleManRiver, my idea of non-essential is much simpler - viewed from the point of view of sustainability. I may not personally be leading the simplest possible life there is, but I have a greater awareness of the non-essential things in *my own* life. Some of it may be just habit, some you could call 'acquired taste' or 'addiction', and on some things, I may not have a choice right now, but I won't try to defend them just because somebody else has more luxuries. I really think that the time for radical simplicity is upon us, and until we can feel sure that our current lifestyle is sustainable and the next generation(s) will not be left with fewer resources than what can sustain *their* own lives, I think whatever level of simplicity we can reach for, we should.
Also, viewed from the point of view of finite resources, there is only so much we could be consuming as a society - in every country. If it's important for *every* human being to have the basic necessities of life - food, water, clothing, shelter and a healthy environment, *MUCH* of what we think is necessary for entertainment - especially when they consume vast amounts of resources - will have to go. Not because of any ideology, but simply from considerations of fairness. It's not complicated - unless you want to make it complicated.
As for Woodstock, although it was 'planned', it was also spontaneous in some sense. And it was a one-time event. So, it's NOT what we are talking about - unless somebody tries to turn it into an annual, commercialized event. Sure, some people may feel they are getting something out of it, year after year. Can you then call it essential?