Biomass has a problem: It burns.
Biomass-fueled electricity has an image problem created by its use of a combustion technology; biomass power plants burn something, emitting pollution from a smokestack. This fact has framed the debate over whether power from naturally-grown renewable fuels are truly green or simply greenwashing.
After significant controversy, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally decided it needed more information to decide, and deferred for three years new permitting rules for biomass power plants that would have placed new emissions limits on the facilities. The EPA caved to complaints from the National Alliance of Forest Owners, who objected that the original rules were based on simplistic and selective emissions data.
“This deferral is intended to be a temporary measure,” EPA said in its final rule, issued in the US Federal Register this week. After completing a science and technical review in the “ample time” allowed, the EPA will issue a final determination on its approach to greenhouse gas emissions from biomass-fueled power plants.
The biomass image problem is complicated by intense industry and regulatory debate over the complexities of carbon lifecycle accounting, which holds the key to a core component of biomass fuel’s appeal, burnishing its status as a renewable fuel that can also be stored and used as reliable baseload generation. Windmills and solar generation facilities, without the ability to cheaply store the power they generate during times of high wind or bright skies, are at a disadvantage except when it comes to the smokestack and the emissions from the plant.
Biomass power can be clean, the industry and its supporters claim. In many cases, generators are using fuel that would have been incinerated anyway, and over the long-term, especially if its blended with coal, could be an easy way of aiding the transition to reducing the carbon emissions blamed for global warming.
Carbon emitted by biomass power plants may eventually reabsorbed over millennia by new plantings of trees and other plants in the “carbon lifecycle” because it is not emitted at the same accelerated rate as it is from coal or natural gas when burned. The rate of absorption is subject to a complex array of factors, and early efforts to quantify it have raised more questions than answers; in one widely-cited Massachusetts study the authors at the Manomet Center for Conservation Science claimed biomass could emit more greenhouse gas than coal and was absorbed over so long a period that the reduction impact was negligible.
Environmental regulators have proved increasingly uneasy with biomass’ environmental credentials. After European emissions rules allowed generators to garner carbon reduction credits by boosting their use of biomass fuel, complaints spread about the potential for deforestation as wood pellets were imported to the region.
Rules for biomass use have since been tightened on the continent, and power plant developers in the US have faced intense questioning by power regulators over their fuel sources and whether biomass is truly renewable or should qualify for renewable fuel use and emissions reduction credits.
Biomass power plant financing and construction will remain challenged by the lack of clarity from the federal government on emissions issues, but the industry will have time to make the case for their choice of renewable fuel, even when it comes with a smokestack.
Photo Caption: Cut wood lies in a pile at a local bioenergy plant August 14, 2007 at the village of Juehnde, Germany. Juehnde is the first village in Germany to become energy self-sufficient by building its own bioenergy electrical plant, which uses wood chips, cow dung and plant remains gathered from the community to create electricity and heat.
