2014 Maryland State Policies

Environmental Community Statement on Maryland’s “Renewable Energy” Bills

Out of our uni­fy­ing con­cern for pub­lic health, social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal integri­ty, we urge the Mary­land leg­is­la­ture to recon­sid­er aspects of sev­er­al ener­gy and waste bills that would con­tin­ue to move our state toward increased use of bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion (so-called “waste-to-ener­gy”).

Pub­lic opin­ion strong­ly sup­ports wind and solar pow­er, but is strong­ly against bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion.  A 2012 sur­vey of over 1,000 adults found that more than 81% of Amer­i­cans across the polit­i­cal spec­trum believe that bio­mass ener­gy should be used only after less pol­lut­ing and water-inten­sive options are explored.”

How­ev­er, in 2012, 56.5% of Tier I in Mary­land’s renew­able ener­gy man­date was filled with smoke­stacked com­bus­tion tech­nolo­gies (burn­ing of trash, bio­mass, black liquor, blast fur­nace gas and tox­ic land­fill gas­es).  Only 30% was met using wind and solar.

Part of this prob­lem orig­i­nat­ed with SB 690 of 2011, which turned Mary­land into the only state to put trash incin­er­a­tion in com­pe­ti­tion with wind pow­er with­in its renew­able ener­gy man­date, mov­ing it from Tier II (which is phased out by 2018) to Tier I, where the cred­its are worth more and the man­date grows over time.  By con­trast, New York State has reject­ed three attempts by Cov­an­ta to include trash incin­er­a­tion in its Renew­able Port­fo­lio Stan­dard (RPS) law at all.  Their state envi­ron­men­tal agency has jus­ti­fied exclud­ing trash incin­er­a­tion on the basis that they are far more pol­lut­ing than coal pow­er plants, releas­ing 14 times more mer­cury per unit of ener­gy than coal pow­er plants in New York.  What makes this more incred­i­ble is that New York has ten trash incin­er­a­tors (sec­ond only to Flori­da) while Mary­land has only three.

Mary­land is one of the most heav­i­ly tar­get­ed states by the incin­er­a­tion indus­try, with at least a half-dozen com­mu­ni­ties cur­rent­ly threat­ened by pro­posed incin­er­a­tors.  The largest in the nation is planned for Cur­tis Bay in south­east Bal­ti­more, one of the nation’s most pol­lut­ed zip codes, and home to the nation’s largest med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor.  This plan by Ener­gy Answers would burn 4,000 tons/day of trash, tires, wood waste and shred­ded cars with­in one mile of Ben­jamin Franklin High School.  Bal­ti­more is already home to the largest of three incin­er­a­tors in Mary­land — one that was in vio­la­tion of mer­cury pol­lu­tion lim­its in recent years.  Fit­ting a sad nation­al trend, these incin­er­a­tors are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly locat­ed in low-income com­mu­ni­ties of color.

Trash incin­er­a­tion (includ­ing “refuse-derived fuel”) is the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to man­age waste or to make ener­gy.  It is the dirt­i­est of all tech­nolo­gies Mary­land defines as “renew­able” — dirt­i­er than coal by every mea­sure.  Com­pared to coal, to make the same amount of pow­er, trash incin­er­a­tion releas­es 28 times as much diox­in, twice as much car­bon monox­ide, 3.2 times as much nitro­gen oxides (NOx), 6–14 times as much mer­cury, near­ly six times as much lead and 20% more sul­fur diox­ides.  On glob­al warm­ing, it is 2.5 times as pol­lut­ing as coal for car­bon diox­ide (CO2) pol­lu­tion.  Land­fill gas burn­ing, when it comes to glob­al warm­ing pol­lu­tion, is even worse than trash incin­er­a­tion as long as organ­ic wastes con­tin­ue to be dumped in land­fills, and burn­ing this tox­ic gas for ener­gy makes the prob­lem even worse.

Sub­si­diz­ing land­fills and incin­er­a­tors in our ener­gy poli­cies — and putting incin­er­a­tors ahead of land­fills in waste poli­cies — burns up a lot of mon­ey while harm­ing recy­cling and composting.

Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion is always pol­lut­ing, even if it’s “clean” wood or poul­try lit­ter, and even if it’s burned in an “effi­cient” type of burn­er.  Bio­mass is 50% worse than coal for the cli­mate, no mat­ter what sort of burn­er is used, and is com­pa­ra­ble to coal on sev­er­al oth­er pollutants.

We urge the leg­is­la­ture to ensure that our state’s ener­gy and waste poli­cies fol­low the zero waste and clean ener­gy hierarchies:

ZERO WASTE HIERARCHY

Redesign
Reduce
Reuse
Recy­cle
Com­post
Research (what is left to try to get clos­er to zero waste)
Digest (resid­ual wastes to avoid gassy, stinky land­fills)
Monofill
NO: incin­er­a­tion or “waste-to-ener­gy”

CLEAN ENERGY HIERARCHY

Con­ser­va­tion
Effi­cien­cy
Solar
Wind
Ener­gy Stor­age
NO: com­bus­tion or nuclear

A 2012 Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware study has shown that, by 2030, wind, solar and ener­gy stor­age can meet all of the elec­tric­i­ty needs of Mary­land’s grid with 99.9% reli­a­bil­i­ty at costs com­pa­ra­ble to what we pay today.

Con­sid­er­ing the incred­i­ble poten­tial for clean, green job cre­ation with the alter­na­tives high­er on these hier­ar­chies, we urge that sub­si­dies and man­dates be shift­ed away from incin­er­a­tion and land­fills and onto the high­er pri­or­i­ty clean alternatives.

Amend­ments that would move us in a bet­ter direc­tion:
 

HB 747/SB 734 — Cre­ates effi­cien­cy stan­dards for some bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, phas­ing out black liquor and some wood burn­ers
 ‑Apply the effi­cien­cy stan­dard to waste incin­er­a­tion (poul­try lit­ter-to-ener­gy, waste-to-ener­gy and refuse-derived fuel).
 ‑Move trash incin­er­a­tion (waste-to-ener­gy and refuse-derived fuel) back into Tier II.
 ‑Remove co-fir­ing from the RPS, as HB 931/SB 530 does.
 ‑Make the lan­guage in HB 747/SB 734 as explic­it in remov­ing black liquor and construction/demolition wood waste as in HB 931/SB 530, to avoid loopholes.

HB 931/SB 530 — Cre­ates new Tiers for Ther­mal Bio­mass; Bans Black Liquor, Construction/Demolition Wood Waste and Co-fir­ing
 ‑The bans are good, but man­dat­ing more com­bus­tion-heavy tiers is unac­cept­able.

HB 1149/SB 733 — Dou­bles Tier I of RPS from 20 to 40%
 ‑Remove all com­bus­tion tech­nolo­gies from eli­gi­bil­i­ty, and dou­bling won’t even be need­ed in order to more-than-dou­ble use of wind and solar.  Clean­ing up the renew­able ener­gy def­i­n­i­tion is more impor­tant than dou­bling the num­bers.  Clean­ing it up with­out dou­bling to 40% will like­ly triple wind pow­er, but dou­bling with­out clean­ing up will cre­ate more of a demand for incin­er­a­tors.

HB 1192/SB 786 — Cre­ates a Renew­able Elec­tric­i­ty Pilot Pro­gram that includes bio­mass and gasi­fi­ca­tion (a type of incin­er­a­tion)
 ‑Remove all com­bus­tion tech­nolo­gies from eligibility.

HB 473/SB 787 — Cre­ates Green Busi­ness Incen­tive Zones (ten 10-year zones to pro­vide ben­e­fits to “renew­able” ener­gy and oth­er com­pa­nies)
 ‑Remove all com­bus­tion tech­nolo­gies from eligibility.

HB 240/SB 56 — Paves the way for a “Munic­i­pal Waste Port­fo­lio Stan­dard” that would phase in the burn­ing of 87.5% of Mary­land’s non-recy­cled trash
 ‑Use the zero waste hier­ar­chy instead of one that puts burn­ing above bury­ing.
 ‑Change bil­l’s objec­tives to divert­ing waste from land­fills AND INCINERATORS.

Signed,

• Ener­gy Jus­tice Network
• Assateague Coastal Trust
• Chesa­peake Physi­cians for Social Responsibility
• Clean Water Action
• Envi­sion Fred­er­ick County
• Food & Water Watch
• Insti­tute for Local Self-Reliance
• Wicomi­co Envi­ron­men­tal Trust

Indi­vid­ual signers:

• Hye Mi Ahn — Baltimore
• Ali­son Chicosky — Greenbelt
• Anto­nia Daniels — Baltimore
• Mar­i­on Edey — Sil­ver Spring
• Thomas Her­vey — Baltimore
• Ed Hul­ing — Bethesda
• Pearlyne John­son — Columbia
• Jen­nifer Kee — Baltimore
• Jes­si­ca Kee — Baltimore
• Lynne Kee — Baltimore
• Karen Leu — Tako­ma Park
• Dr. Emi­ly Park­er — Baltimore
• Annie Rice — Sev­er­na Park
• Mary Schor — Bethesda

To sign on, email us and let us know your name and address and, if you’re sign­ing on as an orga­ni­za­tion, your group’s name.  Thanks!