Biomass: Money pit, won’t solve CA energy problems, fires

By Shaye Wolf, especially for CalMatters

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California’s most expensive source of electricity is finally poised to lose a government subsidy that keeps its costs high and its pollution harmful. In an age of clean, cheap solar and wind power, politicians are rightly beginning to treat biomass power as folly.

Biomass energy — electricity produced by burning or gasifying trees — is an expensive, dirty relic that relies on industry misinformation and taxpayer money.

In a voting later this month the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to end the BioMAT subsidy program, which requires electric companies to buy energy from biomass excessive costs — four times the average. Californians suffer from these extra costs on our electric bills, along with the pollution that harms our health and climate.

Utilities and environmental groups support ending this costly subsidy.

But the biomass industry is hitting back with misleading claims that his designs were made clean of “new” technology or that they were necessary for wildfire safety. Don’t be fooled.

Burning trees to produce electricity harms the climate. In fact, biomass energy is more polluting of the climate in the chimney than coal.

Energy release from biomass toxic air pollutants which endanger health, increase the risk of premature death and diseases such as asthma. The facilities are often located in long-established low-income communities and communities of color struggled to close them.

It is significant that the biomass industry is rebranding itself.

He claims he will use “clean” methods to gasify trees instead of burning them. But gasification – which also involves heating organic material – releases large amounts climate-damaging air pollution.

State regulators in May refused an expensive biomass gasification project that could not be shown to reduce emissions as promised.

The industry is also promoting carbon capture and storage, claiming that this technology will suck carbon dioxide out of biomass stacks and store it underground forever. But carbon capture and storage is an expensive, decades-old technology with a long history of failure and seriously health and safety risks.

Finally, the industry argues that biomass energy projects will help pay for forest thinning, which it says will protect communities during wildfires. This means cutting down trees, often large trees that threatens wildlife and destroys forests that naturally store carbon and combat climate change.

Dilution is not a good way to protect communities. Most of the community destruction is caused by wind fires during the extreme fire resistant weatherexacerbated by climate change. The fastest growing 3% of fires are caused by wind 88% of damage to the homes.

No amount of forest thinning can stop this. In fact, thinning makes cool, moist forests hotter, drier, and more susceptible to wind, which can cause wildfires faster and more intense.

Most of the destructive wildfires in California – like Fires in the Los Angeles area in January — they burned down bushes and grasslandsrather than fires, making thinning irrelevant in these cases.

A better way to prevent fires

Instead, the best investment to protect communities during wildfires is tempering homesso they are less likely to catch fireand halting new construction in fire-prone areas. And yet the state has set aside only 1% from its funding for wildfires for home tempering. Most goes to thinning.

Where there is thinning, it is most cost-effective to spread the wood in the forest to create wildlife habitat, conserve vital nutrients and enhance natural carbon storage. If a tree is to be removed, it can be turned into mulch and sawdust. The worst choice is subsidizing biomass companies to produce dirty energy.

Any way you look at it, biomass energy is a polluting money pit that won’t solve our climate or wildfire safety problems.

California already has the affordable solutions we need: clean, low-cost solar and wind power and energy storage to power our state and home harden to protect communities from wildfires while developing local economies.
California’s leaders must adopt these proven solutions and get us out of the expensive, dangerous biomass business.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.