Bill to Subsidize California Biomass Facilities

- by John Cox, April 6, 2015, Bak­ers­field Californian

Local farm­ers are adding their sup­port to leg­is­la­tion that would divert rev­enue from California’s cap-and-trade pro­gram to bio­mass plants that gen­er­ate pow­er by burn­ing agri­cul­tur­al and urban green waste.

Last month the Kern Coun­ty Farm Bureau co-host­ed a meet­ing in Delano to raise aware­ness of Assem­bly Bill 590 and help an indus­try the group called “very impor­tant” to local grow­ers, in that bio­mass plants take trim­mings and old trees that would oth­er­wise be more expen­sive for farm­ers to dis­pose of.

AB 590, co-authored by Assem­bly­men Rudy Salas, D‑Bakersfield, and Bri­an Dahle, R‑Bieber, is mak­ing its way through the state capi­tol at a time when California’s bio­mass indus­try says it is hav­ing a hard time com­pet­ing with cheap­er sources of elec­tri­cal pow­er, includ­ing solar pan­els and nat­ur­al gas.

The indus­try says bio­mass plants, of which Kern has two, deserve the state’s finan­cial sup­port because they reduce car­bon emis­sions and divert waste from landfills.

Bio­mass is not with­out its crit­ics. The edi­tor of Bio­mass Mon­i­tor, Josh Schloss­berg, said green waste is bet­ter dis­posed of through com­post­ing, and that the facil­i­ties’ emis­sion fil­ters let through fine par­tic­u­lates and volatile organ­ic compounds.

“Pret­ty much every pol­lu­tant that’s emit­ted by a coal plant is also emit­ted by a bio­mass plant,” he said.

But with­out bio­mass pow­er plants, many Cen­tral Val­ley farm­ers would prob­a­bly burn their waste in a far more pol­lut­ing fash­ion, said Matt Barnes, direc­tor of oper­a­tions and finance at Cov­an­ta Delano Pow­er. The 50-megawatt bio­mass plant employs 50 full-time work­ers on Pond Road and burns more than 1,200 tons of bio­mass per day.

He said bio­mass plants also reduce demand for fos­sil fuels and, by com­bust­ing wood that would oth­er­wise pro­duce methane dur­ing decay, removes a big source of green­house gases.

“It’s not added pol­lu­tion,” Barnes said of the bio­mass industry’s emis­sions. “It’s reduced pol­lu­tion, by about 95 percent.”

Assem­bly­man Salas agreed that bio­mass is a healthy alter­na­tive to hav­ing farm­ers burn their waste open­ly. He added that, unlike cer­tain oth­er forms of renew­able ener­gy, bio­mass can pro­duce pow­er at any time, regard­less of weath­er conditions.

The Cal­i­for­nia Bio­mass Ener­gy Alliance says five plants have closed over the past year, leav­ing 26 func­tion­ing facil­i­ties, main­ly because of expired pow­er contracts.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Julee Mali­nows­ki Ball said util­i­ties are unwill­ing to pay the rates nec­es­sary to keep bio­mass plants open.

“The con­tracts signed back in the ’80s were 25‑, 30-year con­tracts and, at the end of those con­tracts, every­one expect­ed pow­er and ener­gy prices to be much high­er than they are today,” she said. “They def­i­nite­ly didn’t antic­i­pate the world we live in today.”

Dahle’s bill would raise an esti­mat­ed $74 mil­lion to $120 mil­lion per year by tap­ping rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by sales of air pol­lu­tion cred­its. That mon­ey would be dis­trib­uted to bio­mass plants in the great­est finan­cial need.

Cal­i­for­nia bio­mass plants dis­pose of an esti­mat­ed 8 mil­lion tons of waste per year and cut car­bon diox­ide emis­sions by 1.5 to 3.5 mil­lion tons annu­al­ly. Togeth­er they pro­duce 565 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty, enough to pow­er more than 420,000 homes.