Biomass anxiety
- |
ENVIRONMENTALISTS in Western Massachusetts are split over proposals for wood-burning electric power stations. Four proposed wood-burning generators would qualify for renewable-energy credits, but some activists worry about their effect on the state's forests. As long as the state fulfills its promise to monitor closely the impact on forests, however, the power stations could play an important role in displacing utilities' use of fossil-fuel-burning units.
Wood-fired electricity qualifies as carbon-neutral because the carbon dioxide the generators emit would have been released anyway as trees die and decompose. This distinguishes the carbon of trees from the carbon of burned coal or natural gas, which would otherwise stay locked underground.
Critics of the biomass facilities, as the wood-burning generators are called, say that the fuel used in loggers' chain saws, chippers, and forestry vehicles undercuts the carbon neutrality of the process. Also, critics argue that harvested trees can no longer absorb carbon dioxide at a time when the planet could be speeding toward a global-warming tipping point.
Proponents of biomass power generation counter that careful thinning of forests to produce biomass fuel could actually increase the capacity of remaining trees to grow quickly and absorb more carbon dioxide. Also, unlike other renewable energy sources like wind and solar, biomass would provide baseload, not intermittent, power.
Last month the state decided to let a proposed biomass plant in Greenfield - expected to generate 47 megawatts, enough to power about 4,700 homes - proceed without filing a full environmental impact report. In his ruling, the state's secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Ian Bowles, said the state had already formed an advisory group of stakeholders and a Technical Steering Committee to address the issue raised by many critics: the "sustainable stewardship" of state forest lands.
Some advocates of biomass say that by using low-grade wood, diseased and invasive-species trees, and the waste from tree-trimming, such power plants have the potential to improve, not degrade, the region's forests. Right now, the greatest threat to privately owned woodlands is the pressure to sell to developers. A new market for forest waste would create value and help keep the forests off the auction block.
A real danger is that a flood of biomass plants would put such demand on forests that they would begin to resemble the denuded landscapes left by farmers and charcoalers of 200 years ago. That's where the state's advisory group and Technical Steering Committee would have to make sure that biomass does not turn into a biomess.
