Biofuels: Are We Being Set Up?

There's a lot of excitement about biofuels. And rightfully so. As I've written before, biofuels will be an integral part of our energy infrastructure as we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. But we also need to keep in mind that biofuels will not be a panacea, allowing us to just keep living as we are. Biofuels will fill niche applications that they are well-suited to serve. The sooner we realize this, the more effectively we can grow the biofuels industries we will need.

I wrote earlier about biodiesel, one particular biofuel, and the lowering of expectations for its utility. Now we are starting to see a similar - and very important - lowering of expectations for biomass energy, or the energy that we get from burning things beside fossil fuels.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts released a study last week outlining the impacts of biomass powered facilities. It wasn't just an abstract study. The Commonwealth has been asked to permit several biomass powered facilities, and has found increasingly vocal objections from citizens. It imposed a moratorium on permits last December pending the publication of this study. While applying only to Massachusetts, the study rendered some insightful conclusions.

• Biomass Power Plants May be Worse than Coal for the Climate. If a plant is burning fuel, especially wood, grown explicitly for power production, then the environmental impact is more severe than coal. To be even remotely beneficial, biomass plants should burn only material that was destined to be burned or otherwise disposed of anyway.
  
  

• Electricity-Only Biomass Plants Are Probably Not Beneficial. If a plant is producing ONLY electricity, then it is probably less efficient and more harmful than a coal plant. If, on the other hand, its heat is being captured and used, thus displacing the use of natural gas in some other application, then it is likely to be more efficient and less harmful than coal.
  
  

• HOW Something Is Burned Matters as Much as WHAT Is Burned A good tight combustion chamber with effective draft control ensures the cleanest burn. Anything less leads to incomplete combustion and harmful, or even toxic, compounds in the exhaust.
  
  

This points the way pretty clearly to the best configuration for biomass plants. They should use waste products for combustion. They should be combined heat & power plants. And they should be the latest combustion technologies. The unnerving thing is that we are likely being set up here. Not intentionally, but out of our own ignorance. Most plants currently being developed don't meet one or more of these criteria. Furthermore, our very policies ignore these realities. For example, Massachusetts Forest Watch estimates that there are six or seven megawatts of power available from residue materials in Massachusetts. But a look at the permitting applications reveals that there are plans for about 200 megawatts of production capacity across the state. Leave aside that most of them are electricity-only plants. How are we supposed to fuel all of them?

When the residue biomass runs short, what will happen? Will the government be able to shut down those plants? That's unlikely. Will fuel be brought in from outside the State? Perhaps. But it will be accompanied by a larger carbon footprint. Or will plant owners turn to forest owners who can cut down trees to feed the power grid? There will be a tremendous amount of pressure to do so, and a tremendous amount of pressure on governments to allow it.

It's worth broadcasting the Massachusetts findings far and wide. We are going to need biomass energy, and it needs to produce a benefit. It can if we plan it right. But we're not doing that right now. We're setting ourselves up.

Paul Birkeland lives in Seattle, WA, US, and develops Strategic Energy Management Systems for government, commercial, and industrial organizations through Integrated Renewable Energy.