Virginia groups call on Congress to oppose biomass carbon neutrality myth

July 6, 2016

Virginia Congressional Delegation

U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate

Download the letter here

Dear Members of Congress:

We are a group of environmental organizations located in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  We write to express our urgent and deep concern at recent attempts in Congress to legislate biomass energy as “carbon neutral.”  If enacted, the “Collins amendment” to the Senate Energy Bill[1] and separate language in the House and Senate Appropriations bills[2] would promote forest harvesting for biomass fuel and increase carbon emissions from the power sector.  These provisions contradict EPA’s independence to regulate carbon and other sources of pollution and weaken US leadership on global forest preservation and climate change commitments reached under the 2015 Cop 21 Paris Agreement.  Accordingly, we request that you strongly oppose placement of this language, or any similar language dictating specific favorable treatment for bioenergy, in any legislation.

Utility-scale biomass plants are demonstrably a highly inefficient and polluting way to generate electricity.  Typical CO₂ emissions at a modern utility-scale biomass plant are more than 150% those of a state-of-the-art coal-fired plant, and as much as 400% those of a natural gas facility.[3]  Theoretically, forests can regrow and capture CO₂ to offset these emissions – but forest modeling shows that such regrowth takes decades, and is not adequate to recapture the full lifecycle emissions of biomass electricity production, which are significant.

(see footnote 3 for references)

Provisions dictating that EPA must treat bioenergy as carbon neutral appeared in the recently passed Senate energy bill and in the House and Senate Interior/EPA Appropriations bills as passed by the full appropriations committee in each chamber.

The Washington Post editorial page recently characterized attempts to legislate bioenergy as carbon neutral in the Senate energy bill as a “glaring flaw,” [4] referencing a letter sent to the Senate by scientists that concludes treating bioenergy as carbon neutral would “promote deforestation in the U.S. and elsewhere and make climate change much worse.”[5]  Signers included Thomas Lovejoy, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University; James Perry, Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary; and professors James Galloway, Deborah Lawrence, and Herman Shugart in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia.

“Burning forest biomass to make electricity releases substantially more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than does coal,” the scientists wrote. “Removing the carbon dioxide released from burning wood through new tree growth requires many decades to a century, and not all trees reach maturity because of drought, fire, insects or land use conversion. All the while the added carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere trapping heat.  Right now, large areas of American forests including old growth trees are being cleared for pellets that are shipped to Europe and burned to produce electricity that is counted there as zero carbon.”

Last year, the Washington Post highlighted one of the destructive consequences of this European policy:  clearcutting of forests for pellet manufacture by Enviva, a company based in Maryland.[6]  Enviva has claimed it uses waste wood and residues to make the pellets at its mills in North Carolina and Virginia.  However, investigations into the actual sources of wood used reveals extensive clearcutting,[7]^, [8] including in bottomland hardwood forests[9] that represent important forest carbon stocks and provide irreplaceable habitat.  Currently, the pellet industry’s main market is in Europe, but legislating bioenergy as carbon neutral could encourage conversion of coal plants to wood pellets in the United States, driving further forest cutting.  Already, Dominion Virginia Power has converted three Virginia coal plants to burn wood – thereby locking in continued carbon pollution.

As we have written previously to EPA, treating bioenergy as carbon neutral contradicts not just common sense but peer-reviewed studies in leading journals,^[10] as well as EPA’s own scientists and EPA’s biogenic carbon panel of the Science Advisory Board, who have concluded that bioenergy is not a priori carbon neutral. Legislating that bioenergy produces no carbon pollution makes as little sense as legislating that climate change does not exist.  We ask that you support EPA’s independence and protect forests by rejecting any attempt to legislate bioenergy as carbon neutral.

Thank you,

Natalie Pien
350 Loudoun

Gail Fendley, President
Michelle’s Earth Foundation

Seth Heald, Chair
Sierra Club-Virginia Chapter

Nat Mund, Legislative Director
Southern Environmental Law Center

Ben Glenzer
Sustainable Loudoun

Anne Little
Tree Fredericksburg

Ernie Reed, President
Wild Virginia