Dirtier Than Coal? Under Fire, Institute Clarifies Its Claim About Biomass

A group behind a new study that concludes biomass is dirtier than coal has tried to quell the uproar over that controversial central finding, by issuing a clarification. Generating electricity from "waste wood" creates little, if any, carbon pollution, the group said.

The clarification from the Pinchot Institute, a national conservation organization, was released on Friday after the largest U.S. biomass trade group put the heat on the study's authors.

The report, conducted for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, had focused on the global warming impacts of producing energy from burning down forests, a highly polluting practice.

But according to the Biomass Power Association (BPA), no part of the industry in the U.S. is currently harvesting trees for burning. In actuality, the industry makes electricity by burning forest waste that otherwise would be "dumped in landfills, openly burned, or left as fodder for forest fires," the group said in a release to the press. 

"Our industry is really a byproduct industry," Bob Cleaves, CEO of BPA, told SolveClimate. "We don't harvest trees. We don't produce energy from crops."

Cleaves said he was "gratified" that Pinchot "was concerned about the study being misreported."

"We agree with Pinchot that the study made it very clear that fuels used by the biomass industry currently across the country are enormously beneficial to fighting climate change," he said.

Report Provokes Policy Reevaluation

Last fall, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources commissioned the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, a local non-profit organization, to lead a study to bring "the best science to bear" as it considers the future of biomass energy policy in that state.

Three other groups, including Pinchot, contributed to the research. So far, Manomet has not responded to BPA requests to clarify the study's conclusions. 

The final report, which is based on a lifecycle carbon accounting framework, says that "forest biomass generally emits more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels per unit of energy produced." It claims to blow a hole in the argument that biomass is a carbon-neutral renewable energy resource by saying it could take 20 to 30 years before carbon benefits are realized.

The report is likely to have policy repercussions, at least in Massachusetts. 

As part of its Global Warming Solutions Act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. To date, biomass has qualified to receive incentives under the state's renewable portfolio standard, which requires utilities to get 15 percent of their electricity from clean sources by 2020.

In a press statement, Ian Bowles, state secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said he will now reevaluate current  biomass policies in response to the report's conclusions.

"Now that we know that electricity from biomass harvested from New England forests is not 'carbon neutral' in a timeframe that makes sense given our legal mandate to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we need to re-evaluate our incentives for biomass," Bowles said.

'A Theoretical Debate'

But Cleaves, whose trade group represents 80 biomass power plants, said the report is "misleading" and "inaccurate." The issue of harvesting forests to generate power "is a theoretical debate because that's not currently what the biomass industry does," Cleaves reiterated.