The Recorder’s recent editorial about biomass regulations (“The right to live without environmental pollution”) mixes several topics, each of which needs separate recognition and discussion. The editorial proclaims that “promoting biomass fuels is not the answer,” and that the proposed changes “could undermine (Massachusetts’) … efforts … required to face down climate change.” I think the Recorder has it exactly wrong.
The so-called RPS (Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard) covers plants that produce electricity. The proposed regulatory change in the efficiency requirement will affect facilities that use wood that is cut or down anyway – from municipal tree removals and maintenance, utility operations, and storm damage (“non-forest-derived wood”). The quantity of this type of wood is enormous — some estimates place it at two million tons annually in Massachusetts. What happens to it now? Much of it gets dumped or buried, some is left where it falls. Some gets trucked out of state, at great public expense, using fossil fuels. Incentivizing its use locally to produce electricity is far more sensible than leaving it to rot, or trucking it far away. Any plant that can benefit from the proposed regulatory change will be large enough to have modern pollution control equipment and be subject to a DEP air permit.
The Renewable Thermal Infrastructure Grant Program mentioned in the editorial did not award funding to “biomass-burning facilities.” The focus of the program is renewable heating, not electricity. Most of the funding will be used to stimulate advances in the production of high-quality, clean, dry wood chips, suitable for use in advanced, high efficiency qualifying appliances and systems.
Efforts to promote more local use of what grows here naturally, especially in advanced systems, should be encouraged. Many of the vocal anti-biomass opponents have conjured a monster that does not exist. Biomass can play a modest, but important, role in the state’s energy mix. In the case of electrical generating facilities, there is a ready-made opportunity to use wood generated by natural events and as a byproduct of societal choices. In commercial, residential, and institutional heating, there is an opportunity to become more regionally self-reliant and reduce heating costs while generating less pollution than fossil fuel or older wood-burning devices.
Charles Thompson is a forester and forest landowner from Pelham.