Energy

Beetle-kill pine, other wood pushed as power source — and way to aid ailing Colorado forests

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Another fine photo by Bob Berwyn
From the Denver Post last Thursday..

CARBONDALE — The Roaring Fork Valley lies close to abundant coal and gas fuel sources. But wood is the fuel that has a local consortium — and a state senator — fired up as an energy source that also would aid Colorado’s ailing forests.

A Roaring Fork Valley consortium found through a two-year study that there is plenty of wood in the form of drought- and beetle-killed pine, fire-stoking brush, aged aspen and construction scraps to make it a feasible adjunct to traditional fossil-fuel energy sources. Burning wood for fuel also is viewed as a potentially important part of saving the state from a conflagration like the one that ravaged Arizona forests this summer.

The Roaring Fork Biomass Consortium took the lead on the issue this week by releasing its study, which included trips to Europe to inspect biomass heating systems there and detailed analysis of the carbon footprint of trucks that would be needed to haul wood from forests in the valley.

The consortium also held a bio-mass “summit” Wednesday that brought together experts from across the state and from the East Coast, where a biomass project at Middlebury College in Vermont is looked at as an example for what might be done in Colorado.

State Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said using wood to generate heat is more than an environmental dream. “This is not just another nice renewable thing to do. Colorado needs this,” she said.

Schwartz sponsored forest-health legislation in the last legislative session that created a working group to look at Colorado’s ailing forests and at solutions, such as reducing the amount of dead or diseased wood by using it as a fuel source.

She said that, so far, the forest problem has been looked at piecemeal on a statewide level — not comprehensively as the Roaring Fork consortium is doing.

White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams told Wednesday’s gathering that his agency has plenty of forest available for the collection of woody biomass but noted it would be a byproduct of forest restoration — not the object of such a project.

Like Schwartz, Fitzwilliams stressed the importance of promoting biomass now.

“I think we have a moral obligation to do this,” he said.

One biomass project already is in the planning stages for nearby Eagle County. Eagle Valley Clean Energy LLC is focusing on Gypsum as the site for a $46 million biomass plant that annually would consume 1,200 acres of wood — mainly waste such as branches, thinnings and dead trees. The Forest Service routinely stacks such materials in slash piles and then burns them.

Holy Cross Energy is on board with this project, which is projected to be operational in 2013. The company has committed to buying power for customers who are demanding that some of their power come from renewable sources, said Holy Cross chief executive Del Worley.

Consortium speakers did point out that Colorado faces some drawbacks in moving into woody biomass power. The timber in Colorado is dry because of the climate and thus burns faster. And energy costs are lower in an oil- and gas-rich state, so the savings from using biomass would not be as large as in other places.

Schwartz said she will be working on further legislation that will remove governmental obstacles to creating biomass facilities.

Discussion On Oil and Gas and Roadless

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I think this may be in the running for the single most arcane topic ever discussed on this blog (maybe discussed anywhere!). Nevertheless, I cross posted the piece below here on the High Country News Range blog here and actually got an interesting and thoughtful comment from another roadless geek. If NSO’s in roadless tickle your fancy, check it out.

Oil and Gas and Roadless Rules: Too Complex for Newspapers?

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Photo of oil and gas pads and roads in Colorado, not Forest Service

As you all know, I think it’s really important that the public gets a chance to understand Forest Service (public land, natural resource) issues so they can make informed choices. The problem is that institutions such as policy centers don’t really help on the day to day issues and don’t necessarily allow dialogue with the public on the web; I hope this blog helps with that.

News stories are intended to help inform the public, but by their very nature and the current structure of the news industry, I don’t think they can ever be the right place. Even if the journalist takes the time to understand the complexity, and is committed to presenting both sides fairly, there is no guarantee that that can fit into a newspaper article format. It seems like a structural problem that falls somewhere between the Extension role and a journalism role.

So in this case I will take a news story and try to clarify the issue according to my understanding.This one I know something about (although I am not currently working on this, just to be clear), so I thought by posting here I could help share with readers my understanding of the somewhat arcane and confusing oil and gas terminology and processes (of course readers are interested in forest planning, so arcane and confusing is familiar territory 🙂 ). Here’s the link. I also need to clearly state that I am not saying that the proposed rule is without flaw and directly transmitted by a Higher Power. I just think it’s important to understand what the issues really are. If we, who know, don’t inform the public, who will?

Below is the story with my annotations in italics

Amid efforts to protect Colorado’s pristine forests, drilling rights makes inroads

PARACHUTE — While top environmental stewards in Washington, D.C., fine-tune a plan to protect 4.2 million acres of roadless public forests in Colorado, regional Forest Service managers are opening some of that land to oil and gas drilling.

Drilling rights for several thousand acres in the Elkhead Mountains west of Steamboat Springs and the Mamm Peak area on the Western Slope are to be auctioned in November.

Forest Service officials at the agency’s regional headquarters in Denver declined to comment. Federal Bureau of Land Management officials confirmed the lease sale.

“It’s up to the Forest Service, and we don’t want to second-guess their decisions on how they manage federal lands,” BLM spokesman Steven Hall said.

The offering of access to minerals under pristine roadless national forest land has injected new rancor into the wrangling over plans to protect last remaining roadless forests in Colorado and other Western states.

“It’s looking like the current Forest Service regional leadership gives lip service to roadless area protection,” said Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource Advocates, “but its actions don’t match its words.”

It seems to me that somewhere in the previous paragraphs it should have been made clearer that these leases have what are called “No Surface Occupancy” stipulations which means that the gas will be accessed from outside the roadless area through directional drilling. “NSO’s”, as they are known, prohibit surface occupancy, including well pads and roads.

Now I’m not sure exactly how that could affect a roadless area’s “pristine”- ness, since neither fish, wildlife nor humans can tell whether that gas is being pumped out. If they are claiming otherwise, I and others would be very interested to know more.

The proposed lease sale also highlights a growing peril of the lengthy crafting of a plan to protect roadless forests: As decisions are delayed, incursions keep happening.

These leases are also allowed under the 2001 Rule. So frankly I can’t draw any line at all between the Colorado process (“lengthy crafting of a plan”, who else could the author mean?) and leases under roadless, even if I agreed that it’s an “incursion.”

An aerial survey of several contested areas on Friday by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership revealed dozens of roads constructed over the past decade — many leading to well pads carved out of forest.

Clearly this didn’t occur on areas with NSO stipulations, so it’s not clear to me how is this relevant to the topic.

“We want to make sure the highest-value areas are safeguarded,” said Nick Payne, Colorado field representative for the partnership, a national advocacy group.

Forest Service managers “should not be leasing parcels on roadless areas right now, until the rule is passed. Then we’ll have firm guidelines,” Payne said.

I don’t know what is meant by “firm guidelines”, nor what they are intended to do”; IMHO it would have been helpful to ask for more specificity from Payne here.

The core question many residents of western Colorado face is whether they stand to gain more in the long run from recreation industries, which require pristine forests, or mining and other extractive industries that need roads.

Interesting assertions. Does the recreation “industry” require “pristine” forests? On my vacation I noticed a lot of recreationists on roads. I see people having a great time on 14ers with mining roads, from which you can see dams, roads, towns, etc. And what exactly does “pristine” mean? If it means “untouched by human impacts,” does that include air pollution and climate change? Can human trails exist? You want to write with colorful, meaningful words.. but there is a tension between writing the readable and being careful so people understand.

And going back to the topic, since NSO’s require no roads in roadless areas, this must be an argument against oil and gas drilling at all outside of roadless areas.

Hunting outfitter Jim Bryce, making a supply run from his camp in the currently roadless Currant Creek area this week, said roads into that contested pristine habitat would ruin his business. Currant Creek provides habitat for elk and deer.

But these leases have NSOs, so there would be no roads.

Coal-mining companies that supply power plants in the eastern U.S. oppose roadless protection because they seek access to reserves.

“If they go in there and punch in coal mines and make roads, it’ll be just another area cut up by roads. This whole country is getting cut up, and it affects the wildlife and everything else,” said Bryce, 59, based in Delta, who has run his company for 31 years.

Oxbow Mining employs more than 300 miners at its Elk Creek mine nearby, and neighboring mines employ at least 700 more.

I don’t know how coal (which needs roads to vent methane but is allowed on only 20 K or so acres in the proposed rule) even entered this story which has the topic “NSO leases advertised.”

By early next year, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is expected to decide on the plan Colorado officials and regional foresters hashed out together over several years.

It offers top-tier protection to about 13 percent of the land protected under the Clinton-era roadless rule, which blocks most road-building on 4.4 million of the 14.5 million acres of national forest in Colorado.

Federal courts still are scrutinizing that 2001 rule. The Colorado proposal would make exceptions for mining, logging and ski-area expansion.

I would object to the use of the term “logging” used here. That usually implies trees going to mills. I think this sentence would be more accurate and clearer if it said “20K acres for the North Fork Coal Mines, fuels treatments for 1/2 mile around communities and 8K acres for ski area expansion. This week, at least, I think fire protection for communities would resonate differently from “logging.”Also the writer’s choice to use the acres as I did, calculate them as a percentage of the total (e.g. 20K/4.2 mill=.005%) or not include acreages are all accurate in their own way but may be perceived differently (FWIW, I would have used the acres and let the reader do the math).

Environmental Protection Agency​ officials have urged the Forest Service to ensure top-tier protection for more land.

The drilling rights that federal foresters are offering have had stipulations attached in the past, limiting surface activities. Exceptions can be made.

This sentence is not clear to me. But it would seem to be a good time to mention that the proposed Colorado Rule has specific restrictions against changing such stipulations after the lease is sold.

Energy companies also can drill horizontally so that wells adjacent to roadless forests could be used to extract gas and oil.

Some groups, such as the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, support that approach to development. Others do not.

“The impact of more energy development is going to result in more fragmentation, more isolation, of that roadless area,” said Peter Hart, staff attorney for the Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale, who noted that the Forest Service already has approved 70 wells in the Mamm Peak area, where lynx, a threatened species, have been found.

“Lynx and other wildlife are using this area as a movement corridor, and connectivity is necessary to ensure that these species can survive,” Hart said.

This is either a question of 1) not trusting the NSOs to stay in place or 2) saying that even if the drilling occurs outside roadless areas, it still impacts roadless areas. I can’t really tell which. The Mamm Peak wells were approved based on existing leases without NSO’s (as far as I know) so, again, not clear that that’s relevant.

It seems like this story is really about “some people don’t like leasing in roadless areas, even if no roads or pads are allowed in the roadless areas. They don’t think there is sufficient regulatory certainty or they think ???”. This would be an interesting story to read, to me. In fact, this is exactly the kind of question that would profit from some respectful blog discussion, IMHO. But maybe that would be too short or too specific (or wonky) to fit a newspaper article or newspaper buyers might not want to read it. What do you think?

Ed Quillen on Maximum Trashing Utilization: Colorado Voices I

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For those of you who don’t read the Denver Post or High Country News, you might not be familiar with the unique voice of Ed Quillen. I don’t always agree with the guy, but I find this curmudgeonly Salida resident to be a true Interior West voice and always worth a read. Here he is on a new concept for land use (this is related to the F.S. because of the coal mine, which is currently in (guess what?) litigation). In our next post we will hear another Colorado voice on coal mining in the same area. I think it’s interesting to contrast the perspectives.

Below is most of the op-ed; the rest can be found here.

The West could become a greener place with the help of a policy I call Maximum Trashing Utilization, or MTU. Its fundamental concept is simple: Get the maximum benefit from every disturbance of the environment. If that requires changes in regulations, or perhaps some economic adjustments, let’s just do it. The more benefit we get from “trashing,” the less trashing we’ll need to do.

Consider the vast networks of diversions, reservoirs, canals and ditches we have built to irrigate crops here in the Great American Desert. By and large, the water moves by gravity. And as everyone who has ever seen a water wheel knows, water in motion can be a source of useful energy, for anything from a gristmill to electrical generation.

With those irrigation works, we’ve already damaged the environment by removing water from its natural course. So why not get the maximum benefit by generating electricity at every irrigation reservoir and ditch drop?

There are some roadblocks, though. A state-granted right to divert water doesn’t necessarily include the legal right to run it through a turbine in the process. Hydro projects, no matter how small, must be licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and that can be a long and expensive process, not worth the trouble for the small low-head generating units that would work with irrigation systems.

Furthermore, the power generally needs to go somewhere beyond the irrigation system, which may require building new power lines — and those are often sources of contention and yet more reviews and hearings.

The upshot of all this is “regulatory uncertainty,” which leads to a reluctance to invest even as new technologies are developed for low-head (less than 16 feet of fall) hydro and in-stream generation that hardly affect stream flow.

Now, I realize that we need some regulation; environmental protection is important. But our regulatory system also ought to encourage getting the maximum possible benefit — i.e., relatively clean energy — from the damage that’s already being done. And if making it economically feasible requires subsidies in some instances, well, why not? It’s not as though other energy sources, from crude oil to solar, don’t get subsidies.

Another way to achieve Maximum Trashing Utilization is known as cogeneration. Basically, it means generating electricity with a thermal plant, and putting the waste heat to use.

One of my brothers designs and installs cogeneration units for commercial laundries. A stationary automotive engine is modified to run on natural gas instead of gasoline. It turns a generator to help power the laundry’s machinery. The hot exhaust from the engine replaces the burner on a conventional large water heater, whose intake water has been preheated in the process of cooling the engine.

The result is a lower overall energy bill for the laundry, and more use of the energy from the natural gas.

What’s not to like about it? Well, when my brother added onto his house and wanted to heat it with a small cogeneration unit, he hit all sorts of regulatory barriers, from the city building code and various zoning laws to the municipal utility company’s strenuous efforts not to buy any surplus power he generated. After two years of fighting, he gave up.

There has been some progress on the regulatory front. Back in 2008, High Country News carried a story about methane escaping from Western coal mines. Methane is a flammable gas (it and its close chemical relative ethane are the major components of natural gas) that is given off by coal as it decomposes underground.

Since methane is flammable and sometimes explosive, mine safety requires venting it away from the working area.

Logically, this methane should be burned in a productive way. Unburned methane is more than 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as the carbon dioxide produced by combustion. Plus, there’s the energy from burning it, which could be used to heat homes or generate electricity.

But certain regulatory policies for coal mines on federal land prevented the methane from being put to public use. Essentially, the mining companies had the right to use the coal, but not the methane. For safety reasons, they have to vent it — but they couldn’t put it to work.

That’s changed recently, at least on a case-by-case basis. The Interior Department now allows the capture and sale of methane. But is it economical to do so when the methane is diffuse and the nearest pipeline might lie miles away?

“We’ve tried to look at it every way in the world. If it were economic to do, we would already be doing it. It would add to our income.” That’s what James Cooper, president of Oxbow Mining, which operates the Elk Creek Mine in western Colorado, told a Grand Junction business journal.

Cap-and-trade legislation might change the economics by paying the coal company to capture methane. It’s unlikely to be enacted in the current political climate, but again, if some subsidies are required to get MTU, there are certainly worse ways to spend public money.

Note from Sharon: It would be simpler, and more likely to succeed, in my opinion, to write surgical legislation that would treat the methane from underground coal mines (or at least ones on federal land) as a pollutant and require capture; Mark Squillace, Director of the Natural Resources Law Program at University of Colorado attempted to do this last year. A more productive way of making useful policy than litigating on the NEPA, without running up bills for government and NGO attorneys. In my opinion.

NY Times on Gas vs. Coal

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Kevin Maloney for the NYT

Just when we were discussing the same topic…

here’s a link to a NY Times story

But the cleanliness of natural gas is largely based on its lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned. It emits roughly half the amount of carbon dioxide as coal and about 30 percent that of oil.

Less clear, largely because no one has bothered to look, are the emissions over its entire production life cycle — that is, from the moment a well is plumbed to the point at which the gas is used.

Methane leaks have long been a concern because while methane dissipates in the atmosphere more quickly than carbon dioxide, it is far more efficient at trapping heat. Recent evidence has suggested that the amount of leakage has been underestimated. A report in January by the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, for example, noted that the Environmental Protection Agency had recently doubled its estimates for the amount of methane that is vented or lost from natural gas distribution lines.

Note that the SAF scientist letter mentioned in this post did mention methane associated with natural gas and coal.

Forest Biomass Carbon- Letter vs. Letter

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David Beebe said, in a comment here on this previous post:

“Perhaps vested interests aren’t the best sole source for getting to the heart of the science on this matter without at least including contrasting conclusions coming from perhaps more objective sources?

For instance, http://216.250.243.12/90scientistsletter.pdf”

Now I know some but not many of these “vested interests”. In fact, Jim Burchfield has posted on this blog. As far as I know, all scientists have vested interests in getting research funds. And if you know a lot about something, (say a bird species), you tend to think they are pretty important; hence you are never very objective. Maybe we ought to give up the mythology of the objective scientist and just slog through the claims and counterclaims using logic and practitioner knowledge and see how far we get.

So let’s examine the knowledge claims in this letter.

1. Replacement of fossil fuels with bioenergy does not directly stop carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes or smokestacks. Although fossil fuel emissions are reduced or eliminated, the combustion of biomass replaces fossil emissions with its own emissions (which may even be higher per unit of energy because of the lower energy to carbon ratio of biomass). Agreed.

2. Bioenergy can reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide if land and plants are managed to take up additional carbon dioxide beyond what they would absorb without bioenergy
This isn’t the clearest statement. Plants will grow and absorb carbon. If the previous plants are removed and used for bioenergy, new plants will grow and absorb carbon equivalent to that released when the previous plants are burned. Are we saying the same thing here? Not sure.

3. Alternatively, bioenergy can use some vegetative residues that would otherwise decompose and release carbon to the atmosphere rapidly. I would add possibly “even more rapidly through fires.”
4. Whether land and plants sequester additional carbon to offset emissions from burning the biomass depends on changes both in the rates of plant growth and in the carbon storage in plants and soils. OK.

6. For example, planting fast-growing energy crops on otherwise unproductive land leads to additional carbon absorption by plants that offsets emissions from their use for energy without displacing carbon storage in plants and soils. Agreed but not many acres around that are unproductive but would also grow energy crops.

7. On the other hand, clearing or cutting forests for energy, either to burn trees directly in power plants or to replace forests with bioenergy crops, has the net effect of releasing otherwise sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, just like the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

The other letter did not talk about replacing forests with bioenergy crops, or clearing forests. If it is thinning, that carbon would be released anyway when the suppressed trees ultimately die. I am not following this logic for thinnings, or for dead trees. If we take dead trees, they are replacing fossil fuels and the place they vacated will be sequestering carbon. By getting the dead guys out, they are also opening places for new plants to re-sequester faster.

These seem to be the main questions:

1. What biomass are you taking off the acres?
2. What would happen to the carbon if you didn’t remove some biomass?
3. What would happen to the carbon if you removed the biomass but didn’t use it for energy?
3. What is the difference if you did use it for bioenergy?

Let’s use an example.

You are doing a thinning in ponderosa pine to “restore to HRV” and/or for fuels reduction.
You can use the trees for energy to replace fossil fuels OR you can put them into wood products OR you can pile them and burn them.

If you put them into wood products, the carbon will be released more slowly than in the woods. But you would be using the gas for heavy equipment and transportation and electricity (coal?) at the mill, more transportation to the Home Depot, etc. However, at the Home Depot it would replace boards from Canada, which might presumably have the same gas to extract from the woods, maybe hydro for western mills (don’t know) and possibly more transportation.

If you put the trees into bioenergy, you would still have to haul somewhere or chip and haul. But should this be compared to, say, extracting natural gas? There seems to be plenty of hauling associated with that, including heavy equipment drilling, compressors, etc. Or our old friend coal. Say, on an open mine there are huge pieces of equipment moving overburden and coal around (see photo above) (compared to how much for a skidder per energy unit) , and it goes on a train to the power plant, if you are in Wyoming, at least.

In fact, the more you think about this (in our region, we are being litigated on both coal and natural gas impacts currently, but not bioenergy) the more it makes sense to not consider carbon any differently from any other environmental impact.

It makes sense to me to line them all up (carbon, particulates, development impacts, etc.) and then make the judgment about what is the best energy source .

A carbon-o-centric view of energy sources might be good for some things (like setting up carbon trading), but not so good for others (deciding on the least expensive, and impactful energy technology that helps put jobs in rural America, and lets us control our own energy destiny).

Is This Any Way to Decarbonize Energy?

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We know that coal is the worst GHG producer, so we move to natural gas (which has other environmental effects). But we are for biomass (or not?) and for solar and wind (except …). Here’s a story from Reuters about a new lawsuit against a solar plant. Now there may be areas that are better and worse- and our system of independent entrepreneurs may not select the best places. So do we need some system of centralized planning to make the transition?

We now have lawsuits against coal, natural gas and solar. So there’s a great deal of no’s- an entire legal industry- but how do we get to “yes”?

Given our previous discussion on the use of lawsuits as a tactical tool for environmental protection, I think these quotes are interesting.

The legal brawl comes as the U.S. is racing to adopt renewables. In the United States, renewable energy, including solar, makes up just 8 percent or so of electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That figure was expected to jump to 13 percent by 2035 — but that was before the Green vs. Green feud.

Even though Williams and her cohorts support the broad goal of reducing dependence on fossil fuels, they say it comes at too high a cost if it means building on undeveloped land. Helping their case: the proposed plants are often slated for areas with threatened or endangered animals, including kit foxes, kangaroo rats, rare lizards, and others.

Now, the groups have gone from complaining to litigating. That means solar companies must take funds and management time that would have been spent on developing their plants and spend them instead on fighting lawsuits. For some companies, the likely result is that plants won’t be built

And..

Those who didn’t quickly dusted off a well-worn playbook: using environmental laws to fight a development project.

Lawyers say the moment state or local government approves an environmental plan offers the best opportunity to sue to block a plant, using the federal law known as the National Environmental Policy Act or state law such as the California Environmental Quality Act as grounds. Having threatened or endangered species of plants or animals on a site gives the suits far more heft, they say.

Save Panoche Valley, the organization Williams helped create, and its allies filed a lawsuit in November alleging that the county approved subpar environmental and water assessment reports and improperly canceled conservation agreements to keep the land in agricultural use. Threatened or endangered animals such as the San Joaquin kit fox, the giant kangaroo rat and the blunt-nosed leopard lizard receive special mention throughout the lawsuit. The county doesn’t comment on allegations in pending lawsuits, said assistant county counsel Barbara Thompson.

Getting the permits rescinded is the ultimate goal, the groups say. But almost as good is simply delaying the process. “A long drawn-out one would be a victory too,” says Garthwaite, who believes Solargen would simply run out of money and time to keep fighting.

Solar Millennium is getting a lesson in going to great lengths with its proposed 250-megawatt Ridgecrest plant, mostly on private land in California’s Kern County. Officials are worried about the effect on the Mohave ground squirrel, so Solar Millennium is considering whether to fund a two-year study to evaluate the squirrel population in the area. Phil Leitner, the independent biologist leading the study, says if the study goes ahead, he plans to trap squirrels, put radio collars on them, and take tissue samples from their ears to determine their genetic makeup.

Back in the Panoche Valley, the environmental reports and the permitting process have eaten up almost two-thirds of the money Solargen has raised. Among the bills: paying for scat-sniffing dogs to run up and down the hills, looking for traces of the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.

Are all these lawsuits evidence that something is awry with our system of larger scale policy development and planning? Our country clearly needs energy, and needs to transition to cleaner energy. Is there a clearer path from here to there?

Through the Looking Glass- At Biomass

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with apologies to Lewis Carroll

The time has come, the Blogger said
To talk of many things:
Of carbon and of issues
That biomass use brings
And whether fossil fuels are best—
Giv’n all considerings

I was hoping to have time to approach this topic in an organized way, but that will not happen in the foreseeable future. It’s probably time to plunge in, starting with thinking about the carbon neutral concept. Matthew Koehler had some relevant papers in his posts #1 and #2 here which we can go back to when we talk about this.

We also had a previous post here on the Manomet study.

To me, though, the starting point has got to be understanding the different approaches to carbon accounting and why they are different.

here is a a fairly straightforward approach by Steve Wilent in the Forestry Source. What do you think?

f you think “sustainable,” current king of buzzwords surrounding forestry, is over-used and difficult to define, its successor is even more problematic: “carbon neutral.” Energy produced from forest biomass is said to be carbon neutral, because any carbon dioxide released is later sequestered as new biomass grows. This is true. You might also argue that the combustion of woody biomass releases carbon that the trees already had sequestered, thus paying off any CO2 debt by withdrawing on a CO2 deposit account.

Some states, environmental groups, and, in a recent ruling, the US Environmental Protection Agency, assume that all carbon dioxide is equal, that CO2 from the combustion of forest biomass is the same as CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. That’s true, too. CO2, regardless of its heritage, affects the earth’s climate in the same way. So, there are valid arguments on both side of the carbon-neutral issue.

However, the argument is, for the time being, irrelevant. Although the ultimate goal is to reduce the amount of CO2 in the biosphere, there is little chance of a meaningful reduction in the short term. There are as yet no non-carbon-emitting alternatives to fossil fuels that are both less expensive and as widely available. Until the development of such alternatives—solar power being the ideal, since an unlimited supply is available—it is better to use non-fossil fuels such as biomass.

Look at it this way: CO2 exists both in the biosphere (air, water, soil, plants, animals, and so on) and below the biosphere (fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas). The concentration of CO2 in the biosphere—in particular, in the atmosphere and oceans—has increased because we humans have transferred large amounts of fossil carbon to the biosphere, largely through the combustion of fossil fuels.

As we work toward greater energy efficiency and develop new carbon capture and storage technologies, one of our primary goals ought to be to slow that transfer of CO2.

The Forestry Source- Anyone wishing to subscribe can go to this page: and click on Subscribe. Costs $42 for individuals, $79 for institutions.

Renewable Energy (non-biomass) on Forest Service Lands?

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Here is an article found on the Climate Progress blog about renewable energy siting on federal lands.

Here’s a quote:

When the Interior Department no longer has time constraints imposed by the rush to secure ARRA funding, it should consider adopting some of the siting criteria developed by a coalition of conservation groups. This criteria emphasizes using already disturbed sites, public lands with low resource values adjacent to degraded private lands, and sites close to urbanized areas, roads, and existing transmission lines. A combination of comprehensive evaluations of suitable and unsuitable landscapes and a strong commitment to environmental protections can help avoid many conflicts and ensure that investors and developers have greater certainty as they plan big renewable projects.

Interesting that the piece is about the role of federal land, but it is Interior focused with the FS mentioned in the comments.

The Woody Biomass for Energy Debate- Manomet Study

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As I watch the climate debate, I’ve noticed that biomass has a bad rep in some climate circles. Sometimes it is as simple as biomass is ethanol ethanol is bad therefore biomass is bad. Sometimes it is more nuanced. Seldom is it discussed in a way that reflects differences among places and the variety of possible technologies and material to be used.

Last weekend there was an article in the NY Times on a Manomet study. In this Q&A, John Hagan and Thomas Walker go into some depth describing their findings. Here are some considerations:

The framework we developed for carbon accounting could be used for an individual power facility, a state, a country, or even the European Union (which is importing wood chips from the U.S. and other countries to meet its renewable-energy goals). In order to assess the greenhouse gas implications of using wood for energy, you have to know four things:

• The life cycle of the wood (e.g., logging debris, whole trees, trees vulnerable to catastrophic events) in the absence of the biomass energy opportunity.

• The type of energy that will be generated (heat, electricity, combined heat and electricity), because different types have different efficiencies and thus different CO2 emissions profiles.

• The type of fossil fuel being displaced (coal, oil, or natural gas), because different fuels have different emissions profiles.

• The management of the forest — management can either slow or accelerate forest growth, and therefore recovery of carbon from the atmosphere.

To further complicate the story, while our life cycle analysis looked at greenhouse gas emissions from production and transport of both biomass and fossil fuels, we couldn’t evaluate every possible environmental impact of energy production, such as broken blowout preventers 5,000 feet under water or mountaintop removals to access coal. Rarely (maybe never) does society really weigh the full array of costs and benefits of our decisions. But as the world gets more complicated, and as resources get more scarce, and as the human population climbs to nine billion (and then some), we’re going to have to become more serious about analyzing these kinds of trade-offs.

And

But our study suggests that it’s important to be specific about how you define biomass. Energy generation from harvests of live whole trees from natural forests has different life cycle implications than energy generation from wood wastes that otherwise would have released their carbon to the atmosphere relatively quickly. The choice of biomass energy generation technologies also matters. Biomass fueling thermal and combined heat and power systems typically produce greenhouse gas benefits sooner than large-scale biomass electricity generation.

Finally, we’d emphasize that there are many other considerations besides greenhouse gas emissions when making energy policy — these include energy security, air quality, forest recreation values, local economics, other environmental impacts of extracting fossil fuels (and not just greenhouse gas emissions of burning fossil fuels), and quality of place, among others. Policymakers need to weigh all these factors in making energy policy.

What we’ve done is put a much sharper point on one piece of the story — greenhouse gas emissions. Until our study came out, it was widely assumed that using wood for energy was immediately carbon- neutral. How this new insight factors into the public’s view of using wood for energy remains to be seen.

As for Manomet, our role is to inform society with science, with the hope that a better informed society will make better decisions.