Biomass Incineration

Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion is DIRTY Ener­gy! Join the nation­al Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Campaign!

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Biomass Basics

Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion is one of the most expen­sive, inef­fi­cient and pol­lut­ing ways to make ener­gy — even dirt­i­er than coal in some ways. Forests are destroyed, the cli­mate is cooked, crop lands are wast­ed, resources are destroyed and low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or suf­fer increased health prob­lems from this unnec­es­sary dirty ener­gy source that pos­es as renew­able energy.

Bioen­er­gy is an umbrel­la term for “bio­mass” (incin­er­a­tion for elec­tric­i­ty or heat­ing) and “bio­fu­els” (con­vert­ing to liq­uids for burn­ing as trans­porta­tion or heat­ing fuels). The bio­mass term has meant burn­ing of: munic­i­pal sol­id waste (trash), tires, con­struc­tion & demo­li­tion (C&D) wood waste, trees, crop and ani­mal wastes (pri­mar­i­ly poul­try waste), ener­gy crops, gas from diges­tion of sewage sludge or ani­mal wastes, and land­fill gas. Burn­ing “green” bio­mass (trees or crops), while quite pol­lut­ing, is often a foot in the door for even more tox­ic and prof­itable waste streams like trash and tires.

Bio­mass is dirt­i­er than most fos­sil fuels, but is con­sid­ered renew­able, com­pet­ing for sub­si­dies with true renew­ables like wind and solar. As we move away from coal, bio­mass is increas­ing­ly being sought out as an alter­na­tive (even chip­ping our forests to ship to Europe for burn­ing), thanks to mis­guid­ed renew­able ener­gy and cli­mate poli­cies that fail to rec­og­nize that bio­mass is worse than coal for the climate.

Pollution

Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion releas­es the same types of pol­lu­tants as coal burn­ing, includ­ing car­bon monox­ide (CO), car­bon diox­ide (CO2), par­tic­u­late mat­ter (PM), nitro­gen oxides (NOx), sul­fur diox­ide (SO2), dioxins/furans, acid gas­es, radioac­tive pol­lu­tants and tox­ic met­als like arsenic, chromi­um and mer­cury. For some pol­lu­tants, bio­mass air pol­lu­tion can be worse than emis­sions from coal-burn­ing, depend­ing on the types of bio­mass and coal, and the pol­lu­tion con­trols required. New bio­mass incin­er­a­tors are not held to the same air pol­lu­tion con­trol require­ments as new coal pow­er plants are. Ash from bio­mass incin­er­a­tion con­cen­trates high lev­els of tox­ins, but instead of being han­dled as haz­ardous waste, it’s often sold as farm fer­til­iz­er, enter­ing the food system.

A 2012 Wall Street Jour­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that 85 of 107 oper­at­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tors were cit­ed for vio­lat­ing air or water pol­lu­tion laws in the pre­vi­ous five years. Fires and explo­sions are far too com­mon at the incin­er­a­tors them­selves, their wood piles and in trans­porta­tion. The exten­sive trans­porta­tion need­ed to sup­ply low-ener­gy bio­mass fuels also releas­es diesel exhaust and more cli­mate pollution.

Health Risks

Numer­ous orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing health and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have issued state­ments oppos­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tion due to health con­cerns. The Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion “does not sup­port bio­mass com­bus­tion for elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion,” “strong­ly oppos­es the com­bus­tion of wood and oth­er bio­mass sources at schools and insti­tu­tions with vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions,” and even “encour­ages indi­vid­u­als to avoid burn­ing wood in homes where less pol­lut­ing alter­na­tives are available.”

The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Fam­i­ly Physi­cians, out of con­cern about poul­try waste incin­er­a­tors pro­posed in North Car­oli­na, stat­ed: “We believe that the pro­posed bio­mass burn­ing facil­i­ties pose a seri­ous risk to the health of patients. Cur­rent research… indi­cates that the burn­ing of poul­try lit­ter and wood wastes… leads to increased risk of pre­ma­ture death and seri­ous chron­ic ill­ness­es: The plants addi­tion­al­ly will have a neg­a­tive impact on the health of our patients through emis­sions of nitro­gen oxides, sul­fur diox­ides, arsenic, mer­cury and diox­ins, all of which link direct­ly to res­pi­ra­to­ry, brain, kid­ney, heart and thy­roid dis­eases; can­cer; dia­betes mel­li­tus; neu­ro­tox­i­c­i­ty; devel­op­men­tal delays in chil­dren and dis­rup­tions In fetal devel­op­ment. These emis­sions will have an adverse effect on the health of the most vul­ner­a­ble North Car­olini­ans: devel­op­ing fetus­es, new­borns, chil­dren; those with chron­ic Ill­ness and the elder­ly. The result of bring­ing these bio­mass burn­ing facil­i­ties online will be increased dis­abil­i­ty and dis­ease, which will lead to increased med­ical costs.” Find this and oth­er let­ters from health pro­fes­sion­als here.

Environmental Injustice

It’s doc­u­ment­ed that many pol­lut­ing indus­tries dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and low-income com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing haz­ardous waste facil­i­ties, coal pow­er plants, and trash, sewage sludge and bio­mass incin­er­a­tors. Exist­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tors in the U.S. are pri­mar­i­ly in low­er-income white com­mu­ni­ties, though many of the pro­pos­als for new bio­mass incin­er­a­tors have tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. Read more on envi­ron­men­tal justice.

Climate Threat

Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion releas­es 50% more car­bon diox­ide (per unit of ener­gy pro­duced) than coal burn­ing. Pro­po­nents claim that bio­mass is “car­bon neu­tral” because trees suck up the extra CO2, but this is not true with­in any mean­ing­ful time frame to address cli­mate change, while some stud­ies demon­strate a “per­ma­nent” increase in atmos­pher­ic car­bon. Stud­ies show that it takes at least 40 years for trees to absorb the extra pulse of CO2, mak­ing bio­mass only as bad as coal pow­er plants — and hun­dreds of years to become “car­bon neu­tral.” Cli­mate sci­en­tists insist we don’t have that long to pre­vent run­away cli­mate change. While we do not sup­port burn­ing fos­sil fuels, from a strict­ly car­bon per­spec­tive, it makes more sense to burn coal and plant trees than to burn trees and plant trees. The faulty “car­bon neu­tral” notion also relies on the assump­tion that trees are replant­ed at all (not true for all types of bio­mass) and that they’re left alone and not sub­se­quent­ly cut back down to burn again.

Land and Watershed Stresses

For­est bio­mass puts unac­cept­able pres­sure on forests. While trees are tech­ni­cal­ly renew­able, for­est ecosys­tems are com­plex sys­tems that are not so eas­i­ly renewed. Crop-based bio­mass also impacts land and water, deplet­ing soil, requir­ing chem­i­cals and fer­til­iz­ers, and impact­ing water sup­plies. Bio­mass chews up far too much land for rel­a­tive­ly small amounts of ener­gy. The indus­try is increas­ing­ly look­ing toward inva­sive species and genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied trees and crops for bio­mass feed­stocks, risk­ing genet­ic pol­lu­tion, increased her­bi­cide use and untold eco­log­i­cal impacts. Cel­lu­losic and algae bio­fu­els seek to genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fy enzymes and algae, putting the very base of the life sys­tem at risk.

Economic Burdens

Bio­mass is the sec­ond most expen­sive form of elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion to oper­ate and main­tain, sec­ond only to trash incin­er­a­tion. Since bio­mass incin­er­a­tion is so uneco­nom­i­cal, numer­ous sub­si­dies are often need­ed under renew­able ener­gy, agri­cul­ture and oth­er laws. Bio­mass cre­ates very few jobs per dol­lar invest­ed and is a poor use of woody resources, cre­at­ing far few­er jobs burn­ing those resources as com­pared to using them to build use­ful goods. Trans­porta­tion costs are also high­er than oth­er fuels, since bio­mass isn’t an ener­gy dense fuel and often must be trucked and shipped around with diesel vehi­cles in large amounts.

Beyond Burning

Bio­mass pro­po­nents argue that bio­mass is need­ed as a rewnew­able ener­gy source since it pro­vides “base­load” pow­er (pow­er that can run most of the time), as opposed to inter­mit­tent wind and solar. How­ev­er, stud­ies have shown that wind, solar and ener­gy stor­age can pro­vide all of our elec­tric­i­ty needs and do so cheap­er and with 99.9% reliability.