Adage’s proposed incinerator will rain toxic pollutants on the people of Shelton and Mason County. ADAGE’s permit application for a biomass incinerator proposed for Hamilton County, Florida—a plant identical to the one proposed for Shelton—lists 52 Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) that would be emitted from their incinerator. Lethal levels of particulate matter (PM) are listed, as well as dioxin, arsenic, mercury, lead, carbon monoxide, chloroform, formaldehyde, and sulfurous acid.

Air pollution controls will not protect us from lethal levels of Particulate Matter (PM) that can kill from a single exposure. Emissions of the smallest and possibly most dangerous PM are completely unregulated. Existing regulations for emissions of the next smallest category of PM are not sufficiently “stringent” to prevent “adverse cardiovascular effects”, according to the American Heart Association.

American Lung Association State of the Air – 2008 Report

(excerpts)

Ozone and particle pollution are the most widespread air pollutants—and among the most dangerous. Recent research has revealed new insights into how they can harm the body—including taking the lives of infants and altering the lungs of children.

Short-term Exposure Can Be Deadly

First and foremost, short-term exposure to particle pollution can kill.

Deaths can occur on the very day that particle levels are high, or within one to two months afterward. Particle pollution does not just make people die a few days earlier than they might otherwise—these are deaths that would not have occurred if the air were cleaner.

What Else Can Particles Do to Your Health?

Particle pollution diminishes lung function, causes greater use of asthma medications and increased rates of school absenteeism, emergency room visits and hospital admissions.

Other adverse effects can be coughing, wheezing, cardiac arrhythmias and heart attacks. According to the findings from some of the latest studies, short-term increases in particle pollution have been linked to:

1. death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes;
2. increased mortality in infants and young children;
3. increased numbers of heart attacks, especially among the elderly and in people with heart conditions;
4. inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults;
5. increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including     strokes and congestive heart failure;
6. increased emergency room visits for patients suffering from acute     respiratory ailments;
7. increased hospitalization for asthma among children;
8. increased severity of asthma attacks in children;

What Is Particle Pollution?

Ever look at dirty truck exhaust? The dirty, smoky part of that stream of exhaust is made of particle pollution.

Particle pollution refers to a mix of very tiny solid and liquid particles that are in the air we breathe. Some are one-tenth the diameter of a strand of hair. Some are so small they can only be seen with an electron microscope. Because of their size, you can’t see the individual particles.

Our natural defenses help us to cough or sneeze larger particles out of our bodies. But those defenses don’t keep out smaller particles, those that are about one-seventh the diameter of a single human hair. These particles get trapped in the lungs, while the smallest are so minute that they can pass through the lungs into the blood stream, just like the essential oxygen molecules we need to survive.

Researchers categorize particles according to size, grouping them as coarse, fine and ultrafine. (1) Coarse particles fall between 2.5 microns and 10 microns in diameter and are called PM10-2.5. (2) Fine particles are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller and are called PM2.5. (3) Ultrafine particles are smaller than 0.1 micron in diameter and are small enough to pass through the lung tissue into the blood stream, circulating like the oxygen molecules themselves. No matter what the size, particles can be harmful to your health.

Particle pollution can damage the body in ways similar to cigarette smoking. A recent review of the research on how particles cause harm found that the body responds to particles in similar ways to its response to cigarette smoke. These findings help explain why particle pollution can cause heart attacks and strokes.

McNeil biomass incinerator is the worst polluter in Vermont

“NO!” TO ADAGE INCINERATOR IN SHELTON

1-ADAGE incinerator would kill us and make us sick in Shelton & Mason County.

2-ADAGE incinerator would rain toxic pollutants on our children and community.

• Killer Particulate Matter (PM) • Dioxin • Arsenic •Mercury •Lead

•Carbon monoxide •Chloroform • Formaldehyde •  Sulfurous acid

3-ADAGE incinerator would mean up to 360 heavy truck trips per day, tearing up roads at taxpayer expense.

4-ADAGE incinerator would burn more than one ton of wood per minute, consuming whole trees and ripping apart our forests.

5-ADAGE incinerator would suck an estimated 125,000 gallons of water per day from an unidentified source and dump an estimated 125,000 gallons of contaminated water per day somewhere near Oakland Bay.

6-ADAGE incinerator would cost taxpayers millions of dollars in “infrastructure improvements” and tax giveaways.

CITIZENS JUST BEAT ADAGE IN FLORIDA! WE CAN BEAT ADAGE HERE!

[ download this post as a  reprintable flier ]

Comparison to coal (% above coal emissions)=[biomass level-coal level]/[coal level]

Comparison to natural gas (% above NG)= [biomass level-NG level]/[NG level]

N.B. All the numbers were taken from proposals or environmental statements from the power producers. All the numbers reflect use of pollution controls.

www.ecolaw.biz

By GEORGE WUERTHNER

After the Smurfit-Stone Container Corp.’s linerboard plant in Missoula Montana announced that it was closing permanently, there have been many people including Montana Governor Switzer, Missoula mayor and Senator Jon Tester, among others who advocate turning the mill into a biomass energy plant. Northwestern Energy, a company which has expressed interest in using the plant for energy production has already indicated that it would expect more wood from national forests to make the plant economically viable.

The Smurfit Stone conversion to biomass is not alone. There has been a spade of new proposals for new wood burning biomass energy plants sprouting across the country like mushrooms after a rain. Currently there are plans and/or proposals for new biomass power plants in Maine, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Idaho, Oregon and elsewhere. In every instance, these plants are being promoted as “green” technology.

Part of the reason for this “boom” is that taxpayers are providing substantial financial incentives, including tax breaks, government grants, and loan guarantees. The rationale for these taxpayer subsidies is the presumption that biomass is “green” energy. But like other “quick fixes” there has been very little serious scrutiny of biomass real costs and environmental impacts. Whether commercial biomass is a viable alternative to traditional fossil fuels can be questioned.

Before I get into this discussion, I want to state right up front, that coal and other fossil fuels that now provide much of our electrical energy need to be reduced and effectively replaced. But biomass energy is not the way to accomplish this end goal.

BIOMASS BURNING IS POLLUTION

First and foremost, biomass burning isn’t green. Burning wood produces huge amounts of pollution. Especially in valleys like Missoula where temperature inversions are common, pollution from a biomass burner will be the source of numerous health ailments. Because of the air pollution and human health concerns, the Oregon Chapter of the American Lung Association, the Massachusetts Medical Society and the Florida Medical Association, have all established policies opposing large-scale biomass plants.

The reason for this medical concern is that even with the best pollution control devises, biomass energy is extremely dirty. For instance, one of the biggest biomass burners now in operation, the McNeil biomass plant in Burlington, Vermont is the number one pollution source in the state, emitting 79 classified pollutants. Biomass releases dioxins, and as much particulates as coal burning, plus carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and contribute to ozone formation.

BIOMASS GENERATES MORE CARBON THAN COAL

Besides ignoring the human health aspects of large scale biomass burning, assertions that biomass energy is “green” is a misnomer. Wood burning generates 50% more carbon dioxide than coal. This is largely a factor of the lower heat content in wood which means to generate the same amount of megawatts requires burning far more wood than coal to achieve the same amount of electricity. Biomass burning releases about 3,300 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, while coal releases 2,100 pounds.

BIOMASS IS NOT CARBON NEUTRAL

Proponents of biomass often claim that biomass is “carbon neutral.” The reasoning behind this claim is the fact that growing trees will sequester carbon. On the surface this may make sense, however, it ignores that the it takes decades for new forest growth to capture the carbon that is released by trees consumed in a biomass burner. And that assumes there will be new trees growing—something that one can’t assume because climate change could make many places less suitable for forest growth. In an era of climate change, the assumption that a forest cut will grow back on the same site is optimistic at best.

The problem for humanity is that we need to reduce large scale carbon emissions now, not in 50 or 100 years as forests sequester carbon over decades.

BIOMASS ENERGY IS INEFFICIENT

Wood is not nearly as concentrated a heat source as coal, gas, oil, or any other fossil fuel. Most biomass energy operations are only able to capture 20-25% of the latent energy by burning wood. That means one needs to gather and burn more wood to get the same energy value as a more concentrated fuel like coal. That is not to suggest that coal is a good alternative, rather wood is a worse alternative. Especially when you consider the energy used to gather the rather dispersed source of wood and the energy costs of trucking it to a central energy plant. If the entire carbon footprint of wood is considered, biomass creates far more CO2 with far less energy output than other energy sources.

The McNeil Biomass Plant in Burlington Vermont seldom runs full time because wood, even with all the subsidies (and Vermonters made huge and repeated subsidies to the plant—not counting the “hidden subsidies” like air pollution) wood energy can’t compete with other energy sources, even in the Northeast where energy costs are among the highest in the nation. Even though the plant was also retrofitted so it could burn natural gas to increase its competitiveness with other energy sources, the plant still does not operate competitively. It is generally is only used to off- set peak energy loads.

One could argue, of course, that other energy sources like coal are greatly subsidized as well, especially if all environmental costs were considered. But at the very least, all energy sources must be “standardized” so that consumers can make informed decisions about energy—and biomass energy appears to be no more green than other energy sources.

BIOMASS SANITIZES AND MINES OUR FORESTS

The dispersed nature of wood as a fuel source combined with its low energy value means any sizeable energy plant must burn a lot of wood. For instance, the McNeil 50 megawatt biomass plant in Burlington, Vermont would require roughly 32,500 acres of forest each year if running at near full capacity and entirely on wood. Wood for the McNeil Plant is trucked and even shipped on trains from as far away as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Quebec and Maine.

Biomass proponents often suggest that wood as a consequence of forest thinning to improve “forest health” (logging a forest to improve health of a forest ecosystem is an oxymoron.) will provide the fuel for plant operations. For instance, one of the assumptions of Senator Tester’s Montana Forest Jobs bill is that thinned forests will provide a ready source of biomass for energy production. But in many cases, there are limits on the economic viability of trucking wood any distance to a central energy plant. Again without huge subsidies, this simply does not make economic sense. Biomass forest is even worse for forest ecosystems than clear-cutting. Biomass energy tends to utilize the entire tree, including the bole, crown, and branches. This robs a forest of nutrients, and disrupts energy cycles.

Worse yet, such biomass removal ignores the important role of dead trees to sustain the forest ecosystems. Dead trees are not a “wasted” resource. They provide home and food for thousands of species, including 45% of all bird species in the Nation. Dead trees that fall to the ground are used by insects, small mammals, amphibians and reptiles for shelter and even potentially food. Dead trees that fall into streams are important physical components of aquatic ecosystems and provide critical habitat for many fish and other aquatic species. Removal of dead wood is mining the forest. Keep in mind that logging activities are not benign. Logging typically requires some kind of access, often roads which are a major source of sedimentation in streams, and disrupt natural subsurface water flow. Logging can disturb sensitive wildlife like grizzly bear and even elk are known to abandon locations with active logging. Logging can spread weeds. And finally since large amounts of forest carbon are actually tied up in the soils, soil disturbance from logging is especially damaging, often releasing substantial additional amounts of carbon over and above what is released up a smoke stack.

BIOMASS ENERGY USES LARGE AMOUNTS OF WATER

A large-scale biomass plant (50 MW) uses close to a million gallons of water a day for cooling. Most of that water is lost from the watershed since approximately 85% is lost as steam. Water channeled back into a river or stream typically has a pollution cost as well, including higher water temperatures that negatively impact fisheries, especially trout. Since cooling need is greatest in warm weather, removal of water from rivers occurs just when flows are lowest, and fish are most susceptible to temperature stress.

BIOMASS ENERGY SAPS FUNDS FROM OTHER TRULY GREEN ENERGY SOURCES LIKE SOLAR

Since biomass energy is eligible for state renewable portfolio standards (RPS), it has captured the bulk of funding intended to move the country away from fossil fuels. For example, in Vermont, 90% of the RPS is from “smokestack” sources—mostly biomass incineration. This pattern holds throughout many other parts of the country. Biomass energy is thus burning up funds that could and should be going into other energy programs like energy conservation, solar and insulation of buildings.

PUBLIC FORESTS WILL BE LOGGED FOR BIOMASS ENERGY

Many of the climate bills now circulating in Congress, as well as Montana Senator Jon Tester’s Montana Jobs and Wilderness bill target public forests. Some of these proposals even include roadless lands and proposed wilderness as a source for wood biomass. One federal study suggests that 368 million tons of wood could be removed from our national forests every year—of course this study did not include the ecological costs that physical removal of this much would have on forest ecosystems.

The Biomass Crop Assistance Program, or BCAP, which was quietly put into the 2008 farm bill has so far given away more than a half billion dollars in a matching payment program for businesses that cut and collect biomass from national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands. And according to a recent Washington Post story, the Obama administration has already sent $23 million to biomass energy companies, and is poised to send another half billion.

And it is not only federal forests that are in jeopardy. Many states are eyeing their own state forests for biomass energy. For instance, Maine recently unveiled a new plan known as the Great Maine Forest Initiative which will pay timber companies to grow trees for biomass energy.

JOB LOSSES

Ironically one of the main justifications for biomass energy is the creation of jobs, yet the wood biomass rush is having unintended consequences for other forest products industries. Companies that rely upon surplus wood chips to produce fiberboard, cabinet makers, and furniture are scrambling to find wood fiber for their products. Considering that these industries are secondary producers of products, the biomass rush could threaten more jobs than it may create.

BOTTOM LINE

Large scale wood biomass energy is neither green, nor truly economical. It is also not ecologically sustainable and jeopardizes our forest ecosystems. It is a distraction that funnels funds and attention away from other more truly worthwhile energy options, in particular, the need for a massive energy conservation program, and changes in our lifestyles that will in the end provide truly green alternatives to coal and other fossil fuels.

George Wuerthner is a wildlife biologist and a former Montana hunting guide. His latest book is Plundering Appalachia.

Imagine populating Washington with coal-fired power plants that rain disease-causing pollutants on us—while stoking our Climate Crisis with huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Imagine this scenario with a fuel source even dirtier and more dangerous than coal. This is what the government of Washington State is doing now. It’s opening our state forests to biomass incineration.

Join us, please, in our fight against four Washington State biomass incineration pilot projects that will spew carbon emissions much worse than coal into our air. Join us, please, in our fight against two bills in the Washington legislature that will throw the full weight of state government on the side of biomass burning with its endangerment of our population. The WA Department of Natural Resources is already a key biomass incineration supporter and mastermind of the biomass burning pilot projects.

These projects and bills, if enacted, will throw open all state-owned forests to industry for gathering of wood—either fallen tree parts left from logging, or whole trees– to burn in biomass incinerators. But the effects of burning wood from our forests will be enormously harmful.

1. Biomass burning is dirtier than burning coal. Per unit of power generated, burning wood emits 1.25-3.0 times as much carbon dioxide (the most important greenhouse gas) as coal.[1]

2. Biomass burning emits more particulate matter than coal, a pollutant associated with asthma, heart disease, and cancer.[2]

3. Wood burning biomass incinerators typically increase ground level ozone. Burning biomass produces hundreds of tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), two ingredients of the ground-level ozone that causes asthma in children and exacerbates other pulmonary and cardiac disease problems.[3]

4. Biomass energy is woefully inefficient, averaging only 26% efficiency. Thus, 76% of the energy in the wood burned is wasted.  However, 100% of the wood burned generates pollution.[4]

5. Newly planted trees cannot absorb newly-emitted carbon fast enough to avoid a significant increase in atmospheric CO₂. According to the EPA, 50% of carbon emitted today will take from centuries to many thousands of years to remove from the atmosphere.

6. Biomass-produced electricity is NOT carbon neutral. Only ‘biomass loopholes’ in state and federal laws allow the federal Environmental Protection Agency to report carbon emissions from biomass incineration—worse than from coal—as zero. This defies common sense. What happens when a tree, or any wood, is burned? A pulse of carbon emissions, of course, much worse per kilowatt hour of energy produced than coal. Yet governments around the world—including Washington State– subscribe to the idea those carbon emissions don’t ‘count’. Federal and Washington State law deems electricity produced from biomass incineration to be “a renewable energy source”. So, all the CO₂ from biomass burning is ignored and is not currently regulated.

7. Cutting and burning a tree is a “double whammy” for the environment. The tree is no longer taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere and burning the wood produces an acute spike in CO₂ levels.

8. Biomass incineration plants are ravenous. A single 50-megawatt biomass plant burns about 650,000 tons of trees a year, over a ton of wood a minute.[5]

Our good friends in Massachusetts are leading a wonderfully successful fight against biomass burning in their state. They have gathered 103,000 state-wide signatures forcing the Massachusetts legislature to either vote on biomass incineration or put biomass burning on the state ballot in 2010. They have pressured their state government to suspend for one year the Renewable Energy Credits for all biomass incineration plants proposed for Massachusetts.

Time is short. Washington State plans for biomass incineration are ramping up. Join us now!

Duff Badgley

NoBiomassBurn

www.nobiomassburn.org

duff@nobiomassburn.org

FACT: Burning biomass for energy is “dirtier” than burning coal. Burning biomass emits large amounts of air pollution, and endangers human health.

· Biomass burning is dirtier than burning coal. Per unit of power generated, burning wood emits 1.25-3.0 times as much carbon CO2 (the most important greenhouse gas) as coal.[1]

· Biomass burning emits more PM [particulate matter] as coal, a pollutant associated with asthma, heart disease, and cancer.[2]

· Wood or trash burning biomass incinerators typically increase ground level ozone. Burning biomass produces hundreds of tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), two ingredients of the ground-level ozone that causes asthma in children and exacerbates other pulmonary and cardiac disease problems.[3]

· Biomass energy is woefully inefficient, averaging only 26% efficiency. Thus, 76% of the energy in the wood burned is wasted.  However, 100% of the wood burned generates pollution.[4]

FACT: Burning biomass to generate electricity is not carbon neutral. Under current or proposed laws biomass burning will dramatically increase greenhouse gases because the emissions are higher than coal per unit of power produced, and, because of the “biomass loophole”, the CO2 emissions from these plants are reported by EPA on e-grid as zero.

· CO2 is CO2. Every molecule has the same negative effect regardless of the source, whether it is from a tailpipe or a smokestack

· So called “biogenic” carbon in the atmosphere causes just as much harm as every other type of CO2. The amount of carbon in the biosphere is fixed. It is the percentage in the atmosphere in the next 20-30 years that will determine what happens to the world climate. Human burning of biomass is not part of the “normal” carbon cycle.

· We can’t grow the trees fast enough. The assumption used to be that the trees could grow back fast enough that burning would not cause a significant rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. That is not true. In April, 2009 the EPA reversed itself and invalidated that concept by stating that:

“…for a given amount of CO2 released today, … 30 percent will be removed over a few centuries, and the remaining 20 percent will only slowly decay over time such that it will take many thousands of years to remove from the atmosphere.” Federal Register, Vol 74, p 18899, 4/24/2009.

· “Maintaining the exemption for CO2 under the protocol [Kyoto] wrongly treats all biomass sources as carbon neutral, even if the source involves clearing forests for electricity. For example, the clearing of long-established forests to burn wood or to grow energy crops is counted as a 100% reduction in emissions despite causing large carbon emissions. Replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy does not by itself reduce carbon emissions.” Searchinger, et.al., Science 326: 527, 2009.

FACT: Greenhouse gas emissions from biomass incinerators are significant and will undermine initial efforts to cut US greenhouse gas emissions.

· If the renewable energy targets for 2020 are met then the burning of wood and trash will cause the emissions of 700,000,000 tons of CO2 each year.[5]

· This CO2 won’t be “counted” because biomass is considered a “renewable energy source” by all the Congressional climate bills. This means the CO2 is ignored by the law and is not regulated.

· This “loophole” effectively reduces the CO2 emissions reductions in 2020 from 17% to less than 5%. This is a serious setback in efforts to control climate change before irreversible thresholds or biological tipping points are breached.[6]

FACT: Biomass harvesting over-exploits forests and degrades their vital ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere

· A single 50-megawatt biomass plant burns about 650,000 tons of trees a year, over a ton of wood a minute.[7]

· Biomass plants don’t just burn forestry “waste” (tops and branches) – they burn whole trees which are then chipped.

· Mature trees sequester more carbon than newly planted trees, even though young trees appear to grow faster.[8]

· Cutting and burning a tree is a “double whammy” for the environment. The tree is no longer taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and burning the wood produces an acute spike in CO2 levels.

FACT: Biomass energy wastes water and pollutes rivers

· A large-scale biomass plant requires close to a million gallons a day of water for cooling.

· Hundreds of thousands of gallons of this water are vaporized in the cooling process.

· Plant cooling needs and water takings are greatest in summer when high temperatures already reduce river flows and stress native fish.[9]

· Impacts of water takings will worsen as climate warming and droughts further stress rivers.[10]

· Logging impacts water quality. Equipment tears up soils, leading to erosion and siltation in streams.[11]

· Heavily contaminated boiler “blow down” (rinse water) is pumped back into rivers at unnaturally high temperatures, making waters too warm and polluted for native coldwater fish.

EcoLaw December, 2009