Biomass Energy: Dirty and Unsustainable

Bio­mass Ener­gy: Dirty and Unsustainable

- by Ron Zeller

An assert­ed need to reduce Amer­i­ca’s reliance on import­ed oil is fre­quent­ly cit­ed in argu­ments made for fund­ing projects which are oth­er­wise envi­ron­men­tal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dubious.

The US Depart­ment of Ener­gy uses the term “renew­able” when intro­duc­ing vis­i­tors at its web­site to the top­ic of bio­mass ener­gy. Per­haps it can be argued that bio­mass ener­gy is renew­able, but is it accu­rate to describe the repeat­ed removal of bio­mass from agri­cul­tur­al or forest­ed lands as sus­tain­able? A quick review of some basics on the role of organ­ic mat­ter in soils belies the claim.

To sup­port healthy plant life, soil must con­tain organ­ic matter—plants don’t thrive on min­er­als and pho­to­syn­the­sis alone. As organ­ic mat­ter breaks down in soil, nitro­gen, phos­pho­rus, and sul­fur are released. Organ­ic mat­ter is the main source of ener­gy (food) for microor­gan­isms. A high­er lev­el of micro­bial activ­i­ty at a plant’s root zone increas­es the rate of nutri­ent trans­fer to the plant. As the organ­ic mat­ter decreas­es in soil so does this bio­chem­i­cal activ­i­ty. With­out organ­ic mat­ter, soil bio­chem­i­cal activ­i­ty would near­ly stop.

In addi­tion to being a store­house of nutri­ents, decay­ing plant mat­ter keeps soil loose, help­ing soil remain both porous and per­me­able as well as gain­ing bet­ter water-hold­ing capac­i­ty. This is not only ben­e­fi­cial to plant growth but is essen­tial for soil sta­bil­i­ty. Soil becomes more sus­cep­ti­ble to ero­sion of all types as organ­ic mat­ter con­tent is reduced.

The val­ue of return­ing organ­ic mat­ter to the soil has been well-known to farm­ers since the ear­li­est days of agri­cul­ture. Crop residues and ani­mal waste are tilled back into the soil to pro­mote fertility.

Den­ny Halde­man, steer­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber of the nation­al Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign, asserts that there is no doc­u­men­ta­tion of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of repeat­ed bio­mass removals on most soil types. Most doc­u­men­ta­tion points to nutri­ent loss­es, soil deple­tion and decreased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in just one or two generations.

A cur­so­ry search of the Depart­ment of Ener­gy web­site does not reveal that they have giv­en the issue of soil fer­til­i­ty any con­sid­er­a­tion at all. How­ev­er the bio­mass indus­try is sup­port­ed by both Fed­er­al and State gov­ern­ments through five main advan­tages: tax cred­its, sub­si­dies, research, Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dards, and pref­er­en­tial pric­ing afford­ed to tech­nolo­gies that are labeled “renew­able” ener­gy. With­out gov­ern­ment sup­port, bio­mass pow­er plants wouldn’t be viable out­side of a very lim­it­ed num­ber of co-gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ties oper­at­ing with­in lum­ber mills. But under the Sisyphean imper­a­tive of “ener­gy inde­pen­dence” and with gen­er­ous access to pub­lic assis­tance, the extrac­tion of bio­mass from our farm­lands and pub­lic forests is set to have a big impact on land use (or abuse).

The cre­ation of an arti­fi­cial mar­ket for agri­cul­tur­al “wastes” harms entire local agri­cul­tur­al economies. In Min­neso­ta, organ­ic farm­ers are con­cerned that a pro­posed turkey waste incin­er­a­tor will dri­ve up the price of poul­try manure by burn­ing near­ly half of the state’s sup­ply. The estab­lish­ment of bio­mass pow­er gen­er­a­tion will like­ly make it more dif­fi­cult for fam­i­ly farms to com­pete with con­fined ani­mal feed­ing oper­a­tions and will con­tribute gen­er­al­ly to the demise of tra­di­tion­al (sus­tain­able) agri­cul­tur­al practices.

Sim­i­lar eco­nom­ic dam­age will occur in the for­est prod­ucts indus­tries. Ded­i­cat­ing acreage to ser­vic­ing bio­mass wood burn­ers denies its use for lum­ber or paper. Ulti­mate­ly, the con­sumer will shoul­der the loss in the form of high­er prices for for­est products.

As avail­able sources of for­est bio­mass near the new pow­er plants dimin­ish, clear-cut­ting and con­ver­sion of native forests into bio­mass plan­ta­tions will occur, result­ing in the destruc­tion of wildlife habi­tat. Mar­gin­al lands which may not have been pre­vi­ous­ly farmed will be tar­get­ed for plant­i­ng ener­gy crops. These lands fre­quent­ly have steep­er grades and ero­sion, sed­i­men­ta­tion and flood­ing will be the inevitable result.

It gets worse.

Munic­i­pal sol­id waste as well as sewage sludge is mixed with the bio­mass and burned in loca­tions where garbage incin­er­a­tion was tra­di­tion­al­ly dis­al­lowed due to con­cerns over pub­lic health. Diox­ins and furans are emit­ted in copi­ous quan­ti­ty from these “green” ener­gy plants. Waste incin­er­a­tion is already the largest source of diox­in, the most tox­ic chem­i­cal known.

Pro­vid­ing increased waste dis­pos­al capac­i­ty only adds to the waste prob­lem because it reduces the costs asso­ci­at­ed with waste gen­er­a­tion, mak­ing recy­cling that much more uneco­nom­ic. In terms of dan­ger­ous tox­ins, land-fill­ing is prefer­able to incin­er­a­tion. The ash that is left after incin­er­a­tion will be used in fer­til­iz­ers, intro­duc­ing the dan­ger­ous resid­ual heavy met­als into the food supply.

In real­i­ty bio­mass fuel isn’t sus­tain­able or clean.