Biomass Destruction Entirely Predictable

- by Matt Miller and Ray­mond Plouride, Feb­ru­ary 4, 2015, Chron­i­cle Herald

In a Jan. 9 sto­ry about dam­age to our forests as a result of the need to feed the giant new Nova Sco­tia Pow­er bio­mass gen­er­a­tor in Port Hawkes­bury (“Bio­mass project rais­ing green con­cerns”), Asso­ciate Deputy Min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Resources Allan Eddy sug­gest­ed that these neg­a­tive impacts were sim­ply unin­tend­ed con­se­quences that “couldn’t have been pre­dict­ed before the plant opened.”

This is sim­ply wrong.

There were plen­ty of warn­ings that the pro­posed bio­mass project was too big to be sus­tain­able and it strains the lim­its of cred­i­bil­i­ty to sug­gest that the depart­ment respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing our forests was unaware of the poten­tial neg­a­tive impacts.

Numer­ous stake­hold­ers, indi­vid­u­als and experts pre­dict­ed this out­come and laid out clear steps to try to mit­i­gate the eco­log­i­cal dam­age that the advent of this huge new con­sump­tive pres­sure would bring.

In 2009, Michelle Adams and David Wheel­er (yes, the same David Wheel­er who led the recent frack­ing review) steered the stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion process for a Renew­able Ener­gy Strat­e­gy for Nova Sco­tia to pro­vide options to help meet the province’s renew­able ener­gy targets.

Wheel­er and Adams ulti­mate­ly gave a high­ly con­di­tion­al green light to for­est bio­mass use, but not­ed that “more dis­cus­sion regard­ing forestry man­age­ment stan­dards and the assur­ance of eco­log­i­cal integri­ty of Nova Scotia’s forests is clear­ly required.”

They were pre­sent­ed with a slew of evi­dence point­ing to fail­ures in the reg­u­la­to­ry reg­i­men and poten­tial neg­a­tive impacts from bio­mass harvesting.

They were clear that the case for for­est bio­mass for ener­gy pro­duc­tion was “con­tin­gent on the abil­i­ty of stake­hold­ers to come togeth­er in a con­sen­su­al way to iden­ti­fy and define sus­tain­able har­vest­ing prac­tices” and called on DNR to con­vene such a con­ver­sa­tion before mov­ing ahead with any bio­mass projects.

That nev­er happened.

Wheel­er and Adams also direct­ed DNR “to devel­op reg­u­la­tions out­lin­ing the high­est pos­si­ble stan­dards expect­ed for sus­tain­able forestry prac­tices as it applies to bio­mass har­vest­ing for the pur­pose of ener­gy gen­er­a­tion — as quick­ly as pos­si­ble” in order to “pro­vide guar­an­tees on eco­log­i­cal integrity.”

No such stan­dards were ever created.

The report sim­i­lar­ly not­ed “pro­po­nents of for­est bio­mass-based elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion will need to imple­ment pro­cure­ment poli­cies that adhere to the high­est pos­si­ble cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards (e.g. FSC or a com­men­su­rate sys­tem), sub­ject­ing the actors in their sup­ply chain to appro­pri­ate audit­ing and assur­ance sys­tems in order to ensure the pro­po­nents’ com­pli­ance.” They fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed “a pre­mi­um of around five per cent of the pay­ments iden­ti­fied for enhanced for­est stew­ard­ship to meet rel­e­vant stan­dards and audit systems.”

To this day, no such sys­tem is in place.

DNR and NSP’s guar­an­tees on eco­log­i­cal integri­ty go no fur­ther than the cur­rent, inef­fec­tive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that’s been in place for all for­est har­vest­ing since 2002.

Can DNR jus­ti­fy these min­i­mal stan­dards as a “guar­an­tee of eco­log­i­cal integri­ty,” as Wheel­er and Adams insist­ed? Not a chance. The con­di­tions for addi­tion­al stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions and guar­an­tees of eco­log­i­cal integri­ty were also ignored.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the steer­ing pan­el for the Nat­ur­al Resources Strat­e­gy, con­sist­ing of retired chief jus­tice Con­stance Glube, Joe Mar­shall, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Union of Nova Sco­tia Indi­ans and Allan Shaw, chair­man of The Shaw Group, warned in 2010 that “there is ample evi­dence that our forests are already under con­sid­er­able stress” and that “Nova Sco­tia does not have the wood capac­i­ty for bio­mass use to make much of a difference.”

The pan­el strong­ly urged the gov­ern­ment to “exer­cise great cau­tion in the use of bio­mass for pow­er generation.”

The Ecol­o­gy Action Cen­tre opposed the Port Hawkes­bury bio­mass project both at the Util­i­ty and Review Board hear­ings and in var­i­ous pub­lic forums. Although we acknowl­edged there could be some use of resid­ual for­est bio­mass, we advo­cat­ed for many small-scale com­bined heat and pow­er projects at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, rather than one or two huge elec­tric­i­ty generators.

We pre­dict­ed at the time that it would result in a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the amount of clearcut­ting and whole-tree har­vest­ing, that valu­able hard­wood logs would be redi­rect­ed from val­ue-added sawmills to the bio­mass chip­per pile, that young stands of trees would be cut before their time, that there would be fire­wood short­ages for peo­ple who heat­ed their homes with wood, and of course, that there would be fur­ther loss of habi­tat for for­est dwelling species.

Less than two years in, all these pre­dic­tions are com­ing true. And the worst part is that it’s not doing a thing to help Nova Sco­tia reduce green­house-gas emis­sions. And to add insult to injury it is also the most expen­sive form of elec­tric­i­ty on our pow­er bills.

Who wins? Nova Sco­tia Pow­er. Who los­es? You, me and all the crit­ters that used to live in the woods. As the Nat­ur­al Resources Strat­e­gy steer­ing pan­el blunt­ly put it: “Unless there is change, Nova Scotia’s nat­ur­al resources will con­tin­ue to be destroyed.”

The fact that it’s now hap­pen­ing should come as a sur­prise to no one.

So what now? Although no one wants to come right out and say it, the truth is the Port Hawkes­bury bio­mass plant is sim­ply too big and too destruc­tive to be allowed to con­tin­ue. It needs to be shut down as soon as pos­si­ble or at the very least sig­nif­i­cant­ly scaled back in size.

In 2017, renew­able elec­tric­i­ty from the Muskrat Falls hydro­elec­tric project is sched­uled to come on stream. Nova Sco­tia needs to begin plan­ning for the phas­ing out of large-scale for­est bio­mass burn­ing for elec­tric­i­ty as this new, green­er source becomes available.

In the mean­time DNR needs to bring in much more strin­gent and effec­tive reg­u­la­tions and pro­vide sup­port and incen­tives to improve har­vest­ing prac­tices now, before things get even worse. And the Depart­ment of Ener­gy needs to insist — through leg­is­la­tion if nec­es­sary — that Nova Sco­tia Pow­er bring its har­vest pro­cure­ment sys­tem up to “FSC or high­er stan­dards,” as direct­ed by the Adams-Wheel­er report.

Matt Miller is forestry pro­gram co-ordi­na­tor and Ray­mond Plourde is wilder­ness co-ordi­na­tor at the Ecol­o­gy Action Centre