Biomass, Solar and Land-Use

[Peter Duval]

I add the memorandum heading to emphasize that this Google Group handles correspondence, and by using it our committee satisfies both the need to provide all members of the committee access to the same information and to provide that information to the public, as intended by the Open Meeting Law. -Peter


MEMO
25 April 2016
To:
Peter Bennett, Chair
Underhill Energy Committee
From:
Peter Duval
Re: Biomass, Solar and Land-Use

The Underhill Energy Committee has recognized the troubling assumption that burning biomass would be carbon neutral. This presumption underlies a number of public policies that promote biomass energy.

The unsubstantiated claim of biomass carbon neutrality is not just appearing in Underhill's town plan. US senators from states with substantial forest industries are using the climate crisis to push more biomass burning by undermining federal rule making with legislation (https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/senate-amendment/3140) that would require consistent federal support for biomass energy. Senator Collins of Maine issued a press release (03 February 2016, http://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senators-collins-klobuchar-king-biomass-amendment-passes-senate) that reveals the intent to promote the industry.

An article (26 February 2016) in the Washington Post reviews the controversy, highlighting the time that biomass CO2 spends unsequestered in the atmosphere:
“Wood is burned in minutes and it takes decades to a century or more for it to absorb the carbon dioxide that was released and grow back,” says William Moomaw, one of the letter’s signers and co-director of Global Development and Environment Institute Tufts University (Moomaw is also a board member of the Woods Hole Research Center, which released the letter). “All that time carbon dioxide is in the air absorbing radiant heat from the earth and raising the temperature.” — https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/26/these-scientists-say-congress-is-legislating-scientific-facts-and-wrong-ones-too/?tid=a_inl

Following a hyperlink in the article to the 24 February 2016 letter (http://whrc.org/letter-to-the-senate-on-carbon-neutrality/), a point about land-use can be found:
"While forest biomass energy may be renewable over the long-term, it is not a low-carbon source of energy like solar panels. Using the same amount of land area, solar panels produce up to 80-times as much electricity as wood burning with no emissions at all.”

Emissions are important, and the land-use ramifications are also compelling: 1 unit of solar farm and 79 units of old-growth forest versus 80 units of “working" forest. It’s not a difficult choice to make.

[Peter Bennett]

Peter,

Very good digging!

Pete B