AUDIO: “Exporting Our Forests and Economy” ANTI-BIOMASS INCINERATION CAMPAIGN CALL (December 2013)

Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign — Nation­al Con­fer­ence Call 

Thurs­day, Decem­ber 5, 2013

TOPIC: “Export­ing Our Forests and Economy”

RECORDING: Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tor Noise – Decem­ber 2013

We dis­cuss the eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of ship­ping logs, wood pel­lets, and oth­er for­est prod­ucts over­seas from the West and East coasts in the U.S.

Guest speak­ers:

-Roy Keene, Pub­lic Inter­est Forester
-Greg Palle­sen, Asso­ci­a­tion of West­ern Pulp and Paper Work­ers
- Rachel Smolk­er, Biofuelwatch

Facil­i­ta­tor: Josh Schloss­berg, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

Notes: Saman­tha Chir­il­lo, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

***

Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Campaign

Net­work Con­fer­ence Call Notes

Date: Thurs­day, Decem­ber 5, 2013, at 7pm EST

Mod­er­a­tor: Josh Schloss­berg (Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, VT)

Note­tak­er: Saman­tha Chir­il­lo (Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, OR)

Attend­ed: Glen Tyler, Gretchen Brew­er (WA), Ernie Reed (VA), Carl Ross (DC), Greg Palle­sen (OR), Roy Keene (OR), Bob Palz­er (OR), David Tvedt (OR) Loret­ta Hus­ton (OR), Saman­tha Chir­il­lo (OR), Josh Schloss­berg (VT), Karen Orr (FL), Den­ny Halde­mann (TN)… (freeconferencecall.com said 15 peo­ple attended)

Call Top­ic: “Export­ing Our Forests and Econ­o­my” - the eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of ship­ping logs, wood pel­lets, and oth­er for­est prod­ucts over­seas from the West and East coasts in the U.S.

Guest speak­ers:

-Roy Keene, Pub­lic Inter­est Forester
-Greg Palle­sen, Asso­ci­a­tion of West­ern Pulp and Paper Work­ers
-Rachel Smolk­er, Bio­fu­el­watch

—

Gretchen Brew­er (WA): Exports from Tas­ma­nia to Australia/Japan have increased. 

Rachel Smolk­er (VT): Yes, exports to and from Aus­tralia on the rise. They are using and export­ing bio­mass energy.

Den­ny Halde­mann (TN): What do we hope to get out of this call and what we can do?

Josh Schloss­berg (VT): Yes, we’ve been work­ing on an action to go along with this mon­th’s topic …

Den­ny: My thought is that we’re oper­at­ing under total green bull­shit. The media is not get­ting the mes­sage. How can we fight industry/gov propaganda?

Bob Palz­er (OR): I find it embar­rass­ing liv­ing in a small uni­ver­si­ty town in South­ern Ore­gon that wants to put in a bio­mass facility.

Den­ny: Why are we not get­ting any attention?

Bob: Not any pub­lic­i­ty because they know pub­lic­i­ty will stop it. [Bob report­ed lat­er expe­ri­enc­ing phone ser­vice trou­ble on his end and hav­ing to drop off the call.] 

Josh: I was going to have Roy start, but Greg can start first since Roy is not on the call yet. I will start record­ing. Press *6 to mute.

Roy Keene gets on call.

Josh: Roy can go first since he’s here now. Josh intro­duces net­work, EJN, guest speak­ers. Roy?

Roy Keene (OR), Pub­lic Inter­est Forester: In 2013, exports dou­bled from the NW. Not just logs but also chips and pseudo­processed mate­r­i­al. Tax breaks to indus­try con­tin­ue. it’s a plea­sure to have Greg here because he is knowl­edge­able about the whole thing. We both spoke at a town hall meet­ing in New­port, OR, which has an export pro­pos­al. Port of Van­cou­ver does, too. All of these OR coast towns are pump­ing up their ports to export raw prod­ucts — logs and chips. The whole region is work­ing at expand­ing exports, rail lines includ­ed. Here’s some­thing I want to make sure you’re aware of.  Indus­try claims no raw logs can be export­ed from pub­lic for­est. But in fact  they can process as far as veneer, which then gets processed into ply­wood in Chi­na, then shipped back to the U.S. Exports are increas­ing rapid­ly, and it’s not being addressed by elect­ed offi­cials. Not see­ing any cry from envi­ro groups, even local­ly. This s con­cern­ing, because this whole wave of exports is his­tor­i­cal­ly what coun­tries have expe­ri­enced in the final dec­li­na­tion of their forests. There’s a drain on integri­ty as a nation when you export raw mate­r­i­al and import the man­u­fac­tured goods. We’re export­ing not just chips but fac­to­ries too.

Greg Palle­sen, Asso­ci­a­tion of West­ern Pulp and Paper Work­ers (OR): i worked in for­est relat­ed indus­tries for > 30 years and as inter­na­tion­al union VP of the AWPP for 11 years. Bio­mass makes more sense for some facil­i­ties than oth­ers, cogen par­tic­u­lar­ly, which has exist­ed at some some facil­i­ties for a long time. We do have con­cern for stand-alone pow­er facil­i­ties, which puts pres­sure on raw mate­ri­als that paper is made out of. I don’t know any­one who does­n’t use paper. We want the clean­est mills, best envi­ro prac­tices, and laws should be strin­gent.  In the last 1 years, there has been a mass exo­dus of pulp and paper facil­i­ties out of the U.S, same with oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers. We know that unfair trade agree­ments, like NAFTA, have caused this because all employ­ees who lost their jobs from off­shored facil­i­ties received TAA ben­e­fits that only go to work­ers whose jobs are off­shored due to ‘free’ trade agree­ments. The Labor Dept. deter­mines the cause of job loss. Many coun­ties  arefac­ing bank­rupt­cy, lost jobs, lost tax base for rur­al areas. Wey­er­haeuser (W) closed its facil­i­ty in Longview, where it was based. W sites how its equip­ment can­not com­plete in the world mar­ket, yet its 2 biggest machines in that facil­i­ty are now in Chi­na. Blue Heron which was retooled to recov­er waste paper could not com­pete with Chi­na, filed bank­rupt­cy. That paper mill was the largest tax pay­er in the coun­ty?  W left North Bend, the equip­ment went to Tai­wan. The Inter­na­tion­al Paper facil­i­ty in Albany went over­sees. When it closed, IP closed its facil­i­ty in the South (Vir­ginia) on the same day. The day after they raised their prod­uct price. All due to ship­ping facil­i­ties and jobs to places where there’s lit­tle account­abil­i­ty and ille­gal log­ging.  We real­ly oppose log exports. Eco­nom­ic and trade poli­cies encour­age it. We oppose the export of all raw resources (coal, nat­ur­al gas). We have few­er facil­i­ties now than in the last 75 years, while demand is high right now. xports is a major fac­tor from pri­vate, cut­back in log­ging on pub­lic forests.

Rachel is delayed a moment. 

Josh: I hoped Scott Quaran­da from Dog­wood Alliance could make it on the call, but he is not able to. 

Saman­tha: Scott just got back from the EU, and I asked him what he learned. He said, “EU is dri­ving demand… cur­rent pro­jec­tions are 18M tons at peak which means a lot more build out nec­es­sary in our [South­east] region. Indus­try is start­ing to come out admit­ting pre­dom­i­nant use of whole trees. Next mar­ket to real­ly watch for is Japan and South Korea where west coast could also be impli­cat­ed. Lots more but too much to sum­ma­rize. You may see if their are indi­vid­ual ques­tions on the call that you could put in the notes and I could answer.” [Saman­tha read only about the first half of this state­ment while wait­ing for Rachel.] 

Rachel Smolk­er, Bio­fu­el­watch: Between 2006 and 2010, U.S.? pel­let man­u­fac­tur­ing rose 6–7 mil­lion tons. Much of that is going to Europe. Japan is a huge con­sumer, num­ber of facil­i­ties oper­at­ing is unknown. A few largest facil­i­ties have closed (Tilbury B). UK has fastest rate of growth and biggest user of pel­lets in 2012, although many of pel­lets going to UK are actu­al­ly get­ting used by oth­er coun­tries. Nether­lands and Bel­gium get more from US direct­ly than through the UK. They also get pel­lets from Cana­da. There’s dis­cus­sion about ? leav­ing the EU. They? are least com­mit­ted to renew­ables tar­get by 2020 that EU has. UK role is sig­nif­i­cant but not the only play­er. Nether­lands plans to dou­ble bio­mass ener­gy. italy, France, Den­mark also con­sumers. IAEA glob­al bio­mass trade report gives con­sump­tion and pro­duc­tion by coun­try. Some cofIred with coal, a lot is CHP. 

Josh: Thanks very much to our guest speak­ers. Who has a ques­tion or comment?

Loret­ta Hus­ton (OR): This is for Roy — Wey­er­haeuser is log­ging heav­i­ly near where I live. ???Men­tions Starfire mill. 

Roy: There’s lit­tle tim­ber left on indus­tri­al forest­land that’s over 80 years old. Starfire pro­duces high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts, so it needs Dou­glas Fir 100 yrs old or more.  This makes it reliant on pur­chas­ing pub­lic tim­ber sales, like Elliott State For­est, or pur­chas­ing from the big boys that bro­ker the sales, like Scott Tim­ber. In con­trast, the har­vest from Wey­er­haeuser tree farms is most­ly export­ed and most of these trees 45–60 years of age. 

Den­ny: Are you speak­ing of west coast timber?

Roy: Yes.

Loret­ta: Next board meet­ing of EWEB [bare­ly pub­lic util­i­ty in Eugene, OR] about the mess they are in and fil­ing law­suit with JP Mor­gan Ener­gy Corps due to sur­plus of elec­tric­i­ty on the grid. Upheaval of lay­ing peo­ple off, push­ing smart meter tech­nol­o­gy, erod­ing more jobs. excess of pow­er? same with seneca bio­mass con­tract? Is a pos­si­ble strat­e­gy to attend the board meet­ing and address this export problem?

Roy: They are armored. Most use­ful thing in Lane Coun­ty [where Eugene and Seneca facil­i­ty are locat­ed] is to get com­mis­sion­ers who are not sub­servient to Big Tim­ber. Bio­mass is already sub­si­dized. It’s a local polit­i­cal prob­lem with Seneca.

Den­ny: It’s a nation­al prob­lem. Nev­er going to be green, sus­tain­able, clean. Until we have ? …

Greg: It’s a com­plex issue. There are many types of burn­ers. I think to take an approach that all bio­mass is bad takes away cred­i­bil­i­ty. For exam­ple, it makes more sense if tied to a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty where they are burn­ing black liquor. Based on spe­cif­ic loca­tion and type of oper­a­tion and when new tech­nol­o­gy can replace old burn­er tech­nol­o­gy. The U.S. is grow­ing more fiber each year than it con­sumes. When we put pres­sure on indus­try here, it shifts abroad. Chi­na is largest man­u­fac­tur­er now. In cas­es where there are per­mits, we push for fall­back lan­guage that, if facil­i­ty clos­es, tax breaks have to be paid back. has to be a study? that oth­er clo­sures won’t hap­pen.  To take a posi­tion automatically …

Den­ny: Vir­tu­al­ly all forestry in the U.S. is nonsustainable…

Greg: The TransPa­cif­ic Part­ner­ship is NAF­TA-style. It’s doing away with envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions while pro­tect­ing multi­na­tion­al corporations.

Saman­tha: I am con­cerned at the direc­tion we’re going in and would like to see us get back on top­ic. Those in our net­work spent a year iron­ing out our plat­form on bio­mass ener­gy, and I’m sure the AWPP mem­bers spent as much time doing the same. I don’t think we’re on this call to try to change each oth­ers posi­tions. So, in the inter­est of get­ting back on track, I’m inter­est­ed in what any of the speak­ers make of the con­nec­tion between Wyden’s roles as both Chair of the Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resource Com­mit­tee with his for­est bill out and as Chair of the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Com­mit­tee, which plays a role in trade agree­ments, like the TransPa­cif­ic Part­ner­ship.  Seems like a con­nec­tion to take note of.

[Saman­tha paus­es in the mid­dle, think­ing she may have got­ten disconnected.]

Roy:  I want to fol­low up on some­thing Greg said. That is — Where is most dam­age?  That’s what I focus on. Bio­mass burn­ing has been going on for decades in the NW. Cogen plants, for exam­ple, are green­er than oth­er options. The prob­lem I have is with the new trade agree­ment and shift of Japan from nuclear to oth­er ener­gies like bio­mass. Not talk­ing about cogen in Japan, but rather stand-alone pow­er plants.  Japan can­not fuel itself. That’s why Coos Bay, New­port, Van­cou­ver are all open­ing up their ports. Think In terms of where the most dam­age is. This is what I encour­age oth­ers to focus on.

Den­ny: The prob­lem is that bio­mass is pre­sent­ed as the sal­va­tion of our ener­gy prob­lems. We are not address­ing this adequately.

Josh: Roy, are you famil­iar with the wood chip slur­ry pipeline that Rose­burg For­est Prod­ucts (RFP) has proposed?

Roy: RFP is talk­ing about build­ing a 20-inch slur­ry line from the I‑5 cor­ri­dor to Coos Bay which can car­ry a water-borne mix of chips through a pipe to the coast. Like many of these pro­pos­als, it’s kept qui­et until the deal is already cut. Polit­i­cal shuf­fling. By the time we hear about it in the media, the deal has been made.

Josh: What is the slur­ry? Is it like a liquid?

Roy: Yeah, basi­cal­ly a mix of water and chips.

Josh: More peo­ple are opposed to pipelines.

Roy: Now there’s also talk about a new high­way to trans­port tim­ber to the port. 

Den­ny: Sal­vage log­ging is anoth­er big one right now.

Loret­ta: Does any­one know who Dave Cebur is? He has been very involved in the hemp indus­try, build­ing mate­r­i­al that can go from the source to the mills. Con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als, lib­er­tar­i­ans all con­sid­er­ing rein­tro­duc­ing hemp as a fiber source. Oth­er coun­tries can grow it. We could grow it as an annu­al crop like hemp.

Roy: Not in the near future. 

Den­ny:  I agree.

Greg:  If it could be legal­ly done then it would reduce the fiber need­ed from trees. 

Loret­ta: Wyden is pas­sion­ate about hemp, as are oth­er politi­cians. Putting ener­gy into sup­port­ing this would be a good strategy. 

Rachel: To replace trees with hemp would require so much con­sump­tion of water, etc. Trees pro­duce so much fiber per unit, fast-rota­tion trees are 3 years. 

Josh: Hemp could be part of the solu­tion but com­bus­tion would still be a problem. 

Roy: Politi­cians sup­port it because they know it won’t move forward. 

Den­ny: We all like hemp as a solu­tion, but it’s not going to fly.

Gretchen: Greg said when we off­shore facil­i­ties over­seas there are less envi­ro ergs. Also talk­ing about burn­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent. Might be use­ful to look at ener­gy return on ener­gy invest­ed and some oth­er para­me­ters for hemp ver­sus coal ver­sus trees and the life-cycle costs of envi­ro dam­age. That would be useful, 

Rachel: Often this just push­es demand else­where. Bio­fu­el­watch has been involved in the glob­al rain­for­est move­ment. Europe want­ed to grow euca­lyp­tus trees in Brazil for its bio­mass, land stolen, land already for pulp and paper. See “Chain of Destruc­tion” report. Although MVP Pow­er made a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing, they end­ed up can­cel­ing the project, but the neg­a­tive impacts to peo­ple occurred any­way because the com­pa­ny claimed even more land in expec­ta­tion of the project. The pulp indus­try has moved around the world.

Roy: As humans, it’s nat­ur­al for us to be con­cerned with our own back­yards first, but then you real­ize you are going to impact some­where else. But for me it’s dif­fi­cult liv­ing in Tim­ber Cen­tral, watch­ing fish num­bers drop… 

Loret­ta: Roy, will you join us for a pan­el at the Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Conference?

Roy: No, I’m going to take the young law stu­dents out on a for­est hike.  I need to go. Good hear­ing from you, Greg!

Greg: Thanks. We all want improve­ments, to reduce car­bon emis­sions. But some­times we get dis­tract­ed from things caus­ing the worst prob­lems. Inter­na­tion­al Paper in 2 years received bil­lions in tax cred­its, claimed it kept them here. Mean­while invest­ed in indone­sia, rus­sia, chi­na, shift­ing to cheap labor, lit­tle laws. Deal­ing with the pri­vate for­est, but Longview unem­ploy­ment [Wey­er­haeuser home base] is at record high. We’re giv­ing tax dol­lars to build a port to com­pa­nies who want to export raw mate­ri­als. Trade agree­ments set up these process­es, send­ing raw mate­ri­als abroad and then import­ing the man­u­fac­tured product. 

Den­ny: Why haven’t I heard your per­spec­tive before?

Greg: I don’t know. Why haven’t I heard yours? 

Den­ny: It’s a beau­ti­ful one.  Sim­i­lar sto­ry with the TN Val­ley Association …

Greg: I think most peo­ple don’t real­ize that 70% of U.S. wastepa­per is exported. 

Den­ny: We need to do mes­sag­ing better. 

Loret­ta: All of these deals are already made. 

Den­ny: Indus­try hates peo­ple like Roy and the TN Val­ley Assoc. 

Loret­ta: The TPP is right around the corner

Greg: Ore­gon Sen­a­tor Merke­ley just intro­duced leg­is­la­tion for all past and cur­rent trade agree­ments to under­go review, remove advan­tages to cor­po­ra­tions for weak­en­ing envi­ro regs, etc. 

Den­ny: ?

Rachel: Has any­one seen this TPP stuff that’s relevant?

Greg: Speak­ing of TPP, not much has been released. 

Rachel: Yeah, the envi­ro impact state­ment said there is none.

Saman­tha: I’ll find out what the lat­est is and send it out. 

Rachel: We’re real­ly late in the game. 

Loret­ta:  We’re real­ly frag­ment­ed to deal with grow­ing prob­lems. What do peo­ple think about using inva­sive species for ener­gy. Scotch broom is full of oil. We have a lot of bio­mass out there, but we’re not look­ing at how we can clean up ecosys­tems in the sourc­ing of biomass. 

Josh: The prob­lem is that burn­ing any­thing caus­es pol­lu­tion. Many peo­ple sup­port pulling out inva­sives, but cre­at­ing a facil­i­ty is cre­at­ing a per­ma­nent, large-scale con­sump­tion, stud­ies have show that these facil­i­ties often need to find anoth­er fuel source. 

Loret­ta: Scotch broom would make a good biofuel. 

Josh: The tim­ber indus­try wants to kill inva­sives when it sprays her­bi­cides. So it’s tough for us to do well argu­ing for remov­ing invasives.

Greg: Are you famil­iar with cap and trade?

Sev­er­al say yes

Greg: We want a car­bon fee, a car­bon tax. it’s gain­ing momen­tum on the west coast.  With it the indus­try would have to use best prac­tices, dri­ve their emis­sions down. On the west coast it would make sense to tax raw log exports to change finan­cial incentives. 

?: Great. is that gain­ing momentum?

Greg: Yes, able to show exports at record highs while jobs at record lows. Have to push eco­nom­ic incen­tive for anything.

?: How is it prac­ti­cal to spend all that mon­ey on infra­struc­ture, like the slur­ry line?

Greg: I worked for RFP pre­vi­ous­ly, but I don’t know how that pen­cils out. 

Josh: It’s been about an hour.  Thanks every­one for join­ing us.  Many jour­nal­ists don’t under­stand the issue, so it’s good to stream­line and sim­pli­fy our message. 

Den­ny: We can kick ass on forests vs. jobs

Greg: I appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk with you all. 

Josh: Next call is Jan­u­ary 2 when we will talk about jobs vs. the envi­ron­ment. I will send out record­ing and notes. Con­tact me at Josh@energyjustice.net.