Biomass Opponents Silenced by North Carolina Commission

Res­i­dents of six coun­ties in North and South Car­oli­na fac­ing mas­sive chick­en and pig-manure burn­ing bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors, includ­ing a man dressed as a chick­en [pic­tured below], were barred from giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny at a North Car­oli­na Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion hear­ing over bio­mass elec­tric­i­ty require­ments on August 28 in Raleigh.

The hear­ing was in response to a request by Duke Ener­gy, Progress Ener­gy, Domin­ion Pow­er and oth­ers to hold off on the require­ment that they pro­vide a cer­tain per­cent­age of North Carolina’s elec­tric­i­ty from poul­try and pig feces, as had been man­dat­ed by the state’s Renew­able Ener­gy Port­fo­lio Stan­dard in 2007. Tech­ni­cal and finan­cial issues have made it impos­si­ble for the com­pa­nies to pro­vide the required 170,000 megawatt hours from poul­try waste in 2012.

“The prin­ci­ples of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice require fair­ness, an open door and an open mind,” said William Fred­er­ick, Sr., who trav­eled over sev­en­ty miles from Samp­son Coun­ty to urge the Com­mis­sion to do more than sim­ply delay the require­ments, but actu­al­ly remove bio­mass elec­tric­i­ty require­ments alto­geth­er from the Renew­able Port­fo­lio Standards.

“We can­not allow the Com­mis­sion to tram­ple on our right to be heard.” Jim­my Bruce, who trav­eled more than 200 miles from his home in Chester Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na was also irked by the Commission’s refusal to allow pub­lic com­ment. “We got called a lot of bad names fight­ing that incin­er­a­tor, but we sure had an open debate,” Bruce said, refer­ring to his South Car­oli­na community’s suc­cess­ful efforts to fend off a trash incin­er­a­tor in 2010. “What has gone wrong with the Old North State?”

“Now is the time to end the set asides once and for all, and with the changes in North Carolina’s air tox­i­cs stan­dards, these facil­i­ties will be dirt­i­er than ever,” said Therese Vick, North Car­oli­na Healthy and Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties Coor­di­na­tor for Blue Ridge Envi­ron­men­tal Defense League (BREDL). “Instead of push­ing the stinky pro­pos­als, the util­i­ties should focus on tru­ly clean ener­gy like solar pow­er and wind.”

Although barred from speak­ing at the hear­ing, Vick vowed to expand BREDL’s ongo­ing, five-year-long cam­paign to halt waste-to-ener­gy pro­pos­als wher­ev­er they appear.

Lou Zeller, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for BREDL—was allowed to tes­ti­fy before the Com­mis­sion due to BREDL’s legal stand­ing as an inter­ven­er in the case—focused on human health, cli­mate change and eco­nom­ic impacts from bio­mass incineration.

Com­par­ing data col­lect­ed on a poul­try waste incin­er­a­tor based in Eng­land to a coal fired pow­er plant in Spencer, North Car­oli­na, Zeller deter­mined that the “poul­try lit­ter fueled plant emit­ted 150% more total air pol­lu­tion than the coal-fired elec­tric plant.” His num­bers also chal­lenged the bio­mass industry’s “car­bon neu­tral­i­ty” claims, while remind­ing the Com­mis­sion that burn­ing poul­try waste “elim­i­nates a valu­able organ­ic fer­til­iz­er” for grow­ing food.

Zeller insist­ed that bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tors are a bad finan­cial deal for com­mu­ni­ties, explain­ing that, “when approached by ener­gy entre­pre­neurs, most rur­al coun­ty eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment boards and local gov­ern­ments have nei­ther the expe­ri­ence nor the abil­i­ty for the due dili­gence required to pro­tect the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of taxpayers.” 

Dr. Michael Noll, exec­u­tive direc­tor for Geor­gia-based Wire­grass Activists for Clean Ener­gy (WACE), echoed Zeller’s con­cerns in his tes­ti­mo­ny that “bio­mass plants are dirt­i­er than coal fir­ing plants,” refer­ring to state­ments made by the Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion, the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety and med­ical asso­ci­a­tions across the country.

Noll also refut­ed the bio­mass industry’s “car­bon neu­tral­i­ty” claims, while cal­cu­lat­ing the mas­sive water with­drawals need­ed to cool the incin­er­a­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­con­cert­ing dur­ing this summer’s wide­spread drought and crop loss­es. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, Noll said solar pow­er was a much bet­ter deal than bio­mass, par­tic­u­lar­ly when fac­tor­ing in how depen­dent bio­mass incin­er­a­tors are on “fed­er­al stim­u­lus funds and tax credits.” 

An employ­ee of Duke Ener­gy con­curred with Noll’s eco­nom­ic assess­ment, accord­ing to BREDL’s Therese Vick. At the hear­ing, Emi­ly Felt, Duke’s Renew­able Ener­gy Port­fo­lio Stan­dards com­pli­ance man­ag­er, agreed that the price of solar pow­er was indeed cheap­er than biomass.