Are Massachusetts’ New Biomass Regulations Strong Enough?

The Mass­a­chu­setts Depart­ment of Ener­gy Resources final­ly released its long await­ed and much delayed bio­mass reg­u­la­tions, gar­ner­ing both cau­tious praise and crit­i­cism from grass­roots bio­mass oppo­nents. The reg­u­la­tions have dis­qual­i­fied stand-alone bio­mass pow­er facil­i­ties from receiv­ing Renew­able Ener­gy Certificates—a ratepay­er sub­sidy under the state’s Renew­able Port­fo­lio Standard—though incen­tives are still avail­able for com­bined heat and pow­er facil­i­ties oper­at­ing at 50% effi­cien­cy, that burn whole trees along with log­ging “residues.”

The reg­u­la­tions came as a response to a mount­ing wave of pub­lic oppo­si­tion to bio­mass incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­als across west­ern Mass­a­chu­setts and the state-fund­ed “Manomet study,” which debunked bio­mass car­bon neu­tral­i­ty claims. Anti-bio­mass resis­tance began in 2008 with the for­ma­tion of cit­i­zen groups in Rus­sell, Green­field, and Spring­field, expand­ing into a statewide cam­paign in 2009. Grass­roots efforts includ­ed cit­i­zen pres­sure on elect­ed offi­cials, a pub­lic edu­ca­tion and media cam­paign, a suc­cess­ful anti-bio­mass bal­lot mea­sure in Green­field, and a statewide peti­tion dri­ve to end all bio­mass subsidies.

The peti­tion, orga­nized by the Stop Spew­ing Car­bon Cam­paign in 2009 and 2010, sought to remove sub­si­dies for both stand-alone elec­tric and com­bined heat and pow­er bio­mass facil­i­ties, by qual­i­fy­ing for the 2010 Mass­a­chu­setts bal­lot. Though the peti­tion received the 120,000 sig­na­tures need­ed to make the bal­lot, the Cam­paign chose to allow the state gov­ern­ment to enact its own reg­u­la­tions in good faith, and did not sub­mit the sig­na­tures. While Mass­a­chu­setts’ large envi­ron­men­tal groups and some bio­mass oppo­nents did not sup­port the peti­tion, the mas­sive statewide grass­roots effort is wide­ly cred­it­ed for apply­ing the polit­i­cal pres­sure need­ed to ensure gov­ern­ment action.

“Mass­a­chu­setts has tak­en a big step for­ward in lim­it­ing ratepay­er sub­si­dies under the Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard for indus­tri­al-scale wood burn­ing bio­mass incin­er­a­tors,” said Meg Shee­han, chair of the Stop Spew­ing Car­bon Cam­paign and the Bio­mass Account­abil­i­ty Project. “Much remains to be done, how­ev­er, to ensure that the reg­u­la­tions are enforced and that we don’t face the pro­lif­er­a­tion of small scale incin­er­a­tors that pose just as much of a threat to forests, health, and cli­mate change.”

The final pro­posed Mass­a­chu­setts reg­u­la­tions require that new bio­mass facil­i­ties oper­ate at 60% effi­cien­cy to receive full cred­its under the state’s Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard and 50% effi­cien­cy to receive ½ cred­its. The reg­u­la­tions would also pro­vide ½ cred­its for facil­i­ties oper­at­ing at 40% effi­cien­cy that qual­i­fy “as advance­ment of bio­mass con­ver­sion gen­er­a­tion.” Bio­mass pow­er plants oper­ate at rough­ly 25% efficiency—in com­par­i­son, res­i­den­tial wood stoves oper­ate at 60% or high­er. Fur­ther, bio­mass facil­i­ties qual­i­fy­ing for Renew­able Ener­gy Cred­its must “yield at least a 50 per cent reduc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions per unit of use­ful ener­gy” over a 20 year life cycle in com­par­i­son to a new nat­ur­al gas facility.

Reg­u­la­tions still allow whole trees to be cut and burned in bio­mass facil­i­ties, while mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion between the removal of whole trees and high-nutri­ent tree tops and branch­es, referred to as log­ging “residues.” Vary­ing amounts of this organ­ic mate­r­i­al will be required to be left onsite, depend­ing on soil qual­i­ty, with “bad” soils requir­ing all “residues” to be left and “good” soils only 25 per­cent. The max­i­mum amount of left­over organ­ic mate­r­i­al that can be removed from any site would be “30% of the weight of the har­vest prod­ucts removed.”

Chris Mat­era, founder of Mass­a­chu­setts For­est Watch, and a key play­er in the anti-bio­mass move­ment in Mass­a­chu­setts and across New Eng­land, calls the new reg­u­la­tions “coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and unen­force­able.” Mat­era believes that “there should not be any sub­si­dies for tree-fueled bio­mass ener­gy, whether it is done effi­cient­ly, or inef­fi­cient­ly, because in both cas­es it will increase pol­lu­tion, defor­esta­tion and car­bon emis­sions.” Mat­era is skep­ti­cal of the reg­u­la­tions’ claims of for­est mon­i­tor­ing, and states that the “air pol­lu­tion rate [for bio­mass] is worse than fos­sil fuels, and car­bon account­ing is ripe for manipulation.”

“These reg­u­la­tions are not praise­wor­thy,” said Jana Chicoine, spokesper­son for Con­cerned Cit­i­zens of Rus­sell, MA. Chicoine was among the first to oppose bio­mass in Mass­a­chu­setts, fight­ing against a pro­posed bio­mass facil­i­ty in her neigh­bor­hood and help­ing orga­nize the statewide peti­tion dri­ve. “These reg­u­la­tions do noth­ing at all to change the basics—the essen­tial fac­tors that caused the Mass­a­chu­setts Med­ical Soci­ety, the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion, and many riv­er pro­tec­tion and envi­ron­men­tal groups to oppose” bio­mass facil­i­ties in Massachusetts.

“We think burn­ing trees for elec­tric­i­ty is a bad idea,” said Janet Sin­clair, spokesper­son for Con­cerned Cit­i­zens of Franklin Coun­ty, instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing Greenfield’s anti-bio­mass bal­lot mea­sure and the statewide peti­tion. “I find it to be ter­ri­ble pub­lic pol­i­cy to reward bio­mass with the public’s mon­ey at 50% effi­cien­cy. A wood stove does bet­ter than that.” Instead of bio­mass ener­gy, Sin­clair would rather see tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey spent on ener­gy effi­cien­cy measures.