Biomass burning pollutes and makes global warming worse. Give voters the chance to decide if it is worthy of support as a form of "green energy."
Click below to watch a Video of fires at Oregon's Biomass One plant. The massive damp chip piles at biomass plants heat up on their own and are prone to spontaneous combustion.
Burning Biomass:
We Don’t Need It - we have enough power to satisfy demand, according to recent data. Recent reports indicate that additional power is not needed.
We Don’t Want It - all the negative impacts - including but not limited to deforestation, water consumption, deteriorated water quality, air pollution, as well as increased carbon dioxide emissions just when we don’t need them – aren’t worth it and are unacceptable.
We Can’t Afford It - aside from being asked to absorb all the negative environmental impacts, rate-payers would be asked to pay at least three times as much as they need to for biomass energy. According to a 2007 Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources document (Massachusetts Saving Electricity: A Summary of the Performance of Electric Efficiency Programs Funded by Ratepayers Between 2003 and 2005), conservation is the cheapest form of energy, costing only 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, and furthermore, untapped opportunities for conservation are substantial. And conservation has positive rather than negative environmental impacts, including reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Why on earth would we want to go with energy from biomass that costs at least three times as much as alternatives and has severe negative impacts to boot?
- Ellen Moyer, PhD, PE
A Letter to the Amherst Bulletin:
Let's get real in this debate about biomass. At the scale proposed, it is not about weeding a forest garden nor burning low quality wood to help our forest landowners retain land. It is about incinerating our rapidly mounting waste.
Via a provision in the Green Communities Act, there is a state commission meeting right now to determine whether to reclassify construction and demolition debris as renewable energy. If reclassified, burning CDD will be eligible for renewable energy credits, and our electricity rates will continue to climb to fund the burning of this "biomass," which won't be regulated as strictly as other incinerators are. There is a huge demand for CDD disposal since Massachusetts bans it in landfills, and New Hampshire has outrightly banned its burning. So this Springfield "biomass" site will be a magnet for regional waste burning. This plant was rushed through the approval process and is now only one city and one state permit away from construction.
The Springfield biomass plant admits it will burn at least 75 percent construction and demolition waste. Construction and demolition debris contains mercury, arsenic and lead. Let's compare to Mt. Tom, for example. The Springfield biomass plant will generate only 38 megawatts of energy compared to Mt. Tom, generating 146 mgw. Springfield will emit 6,500 pounds of lead per year compared to Mt. Tom's 43. Springfield will emit 27 pounds of mercury a year compared to Mt. Tom, capped at 3 next year. And Springfield is also expected to emit 33 pounds of arsenic per year, plus a whole host of heavy metals, dioxins and other hazardous substances. Did I forget to mention that biomass emits one and a half times as much carbon dioxide as coal? How is this considered the better alternative?
Let's take a look at the only large biomass plant not attached to a facility we have in the state - the 17 mgw Pinetree facility which is located in the Westminster area. This plant was the "model" biomass plant supposed to burn just forest wood, yet at a plant almost three times smaller than the one proposed for Greenfield, "enviro fuel cubes" are being incinerated. Conservation Law Foundation dissected these cubes and found plastics, hospital waste and even a golf ball.
The five biomass power plants in Maine that were only supposed to burn wood went on to burn construction and demolition debris. So if there are already serious questions about the sustainability of this practice in our smaller state, why should we hope to be any different?
Our region continually receives an "F" for ozone pollution and a "D" for particulate levels by the American Lung Association. Dave Howland of the Department of Environmental Protection estimates that out-of-state sources deposit 1,800 to 3,700 pounds of mercury in Massachusetts each year. The Springfield municipal incinerator, the second largest lead emitter in the Northeast, according to Natural Resources Defense Council, already adds more than 8,000 pounds of lead to our air every year. Enough is enough already.
It is important to realize that biomass plants are not some new, green technology for creating power. They are simply incinerators, neither green nor efficient, proposed because they are profit-making enterprises. The three combined would not even contribute 1 percent to the state's energy supply, and at what an expense.
- Lee Ann Warner
