Obama and Romney Unite on Destructive Bioenergy Policy

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and Repub­li­can Par­ty Nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney may not see eye to eye on issues like same-sex mar­riage, immi­gra­tion, or abor­tion, but when it comes to the can­di­dates’ harm­ful stances on bio­mass ener­gy and bio­fu­els, the two might as well be run­ning on the same ticket.

Gov­er­nor Mitt Romney 

Tech­ni­cal­ly, Romney’s white paper on ener­gy pol­i­cy, The Rom­ney Plan For A Stronger Mid­dle Class: Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence, con­tains only a sin­gle men­tion of the word bio­fu­els. Yet read­ing between the lines of his plan sug­gests that an expan­sion of indus­tri­al-scale bioen­er­gy is very much on the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Governor’s agenda.

In broad strokes, Romney’s plan would seek to “dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase domes­tic ener­gy pro­duc­tion” in hopes of reach­ing “North Amer­i­can ener­gy inde­pen­dence” by 2020. While Romney’s main focus is to ramp up destruc­tive oil and gas drilling, along with coal min­ing, his plan also sup­ports devel­op­ment of wind, solar, hydro­elec­tric and “oth­er renew­able ener­gy facilities.”

The Repub­li­can hopeful’s thor­ough drub­bing of the Pres­i­dent over the clos­ing of the Solyn­dra solar pan­el fac­to­ry makes it hard to think of Rom­ney as a strong sup­port­er of solar energy—this from the man whose idea of clean ener­gy is “devel­op­ing alter­na­tive sources of ener­gy like biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear, and coal gasification.” 

More clues to Romney’s stance on bio­mass ener­gy include his desire to stim­u­late domes­tic ener­gy pro­duc­tion by allow­ing states to trump fed­er­al con­trol of pub­lic lands—such as Nation­al Forests—and to “reform” envi­ron­men­tal laws so they aren’t “par­a­lyz­ing indus­try.” He also wants to get rid of “reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers to a diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tri­cal grid, fuel sys­tem, or vehi­cle fleet,” which opens the flood­gates to every­thing under the sun, includ­ing bioenergy.

The Republican’s sup­port of the Renew­able Fuel Stan­dard equates to a vote for bio­fu­els, as the pol­i­cy requires the blend­ing of 36 bil­lion gal­lons of “renew­able fuel” from crops, grass­es and trees into trans­porta­tion fuel by 2022. 

It’s cer­tain that Romney’s rise to pow­er would mean a mas­sive and dev­as­tat­ing uptick in drilling for oil, frack­ing for nat­ur­al gas, and min­ing for coal on pub­lic lands. It’s also a safe bet that this fed­er­al lands free-for-all would involve an onslaught of log­ging in Nation­al Forests and Bureau of Land Man­age­ment (BLM) hold­ings, with bio­mass incin­er­a­tors the des­ti­na­tion for much of these forests.

“From oil and gas and coal to wind and solar and bio­fu­els,” the Rom­ney plan decrees, “states are far bet­ter able to devel­op, adopt, and enforce reg­u­la­tions based on their unique resources, geol­o­gy, and local con­cerns.” Rom­ney would estab­lish a “State Ener­gy Devel­op­ment Coun­cil,” to give states the pow­er to “estab­lish process­es to over­see the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of all forms of ener­gy on fed­er­al lands with­in their borders.”

While the plan claims ener­gy devel­op­ment would exclude “lands spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed off-lim­its,” it’s unclear whether this refers to Wilder­ness Areas, Wildlife Refuges, or sim­ply tracts where nei­ther oil, gas, coal, nor bio­mass are to be found in great enough quan­ti­ties to be profitable.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama

Pres­i­dent Obama’s posi­tion on bio­mass and bio­fu­els is far less spec­u­la­tive than Romney’s, based on the Democrat’s actions over the last four years. Accord­ing to the bio­mass indus­try trade mag­a­zine, Bio­mass Mag­a­zine, Oba­ma “has assem­bled some­what of a ‘bioen­er­gy dream team,’” refer­ring to strong­ly pro-bioen­er­gy heads of the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) (Tom Vil­sack), Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) (Steven Chu), Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) (Lisa Jack­son) and even the Navy (Ray Mabus).

Much of Obama’s bio­mass boost­ing has come in the form of a del­uge of bil­lions of dol­lars of tax­pay­er sub­si­dies to the pol­lut­ing bioen­er­gy indus­try. His own plan trum­pets the fact that “both through the Recov­ery Act and the 2008 Farm Bill, DOE and USDA have pro­vid­ed grants, loans and loan guar­an­tees to spur Amer­i­can inge­nu­ity on the next gen­er­a­tion of biofuels.”

The Amer­i­can Rein­vest­ment and Recov­ery Act (ARRA), or Stim­u­lus Act, alone hand­ed over $800 mil­lion for the devel­op­ment of advanced bio­fu­els and over $100 mil­lion to build nine new bio­mass incin­er­a­tors through Act 1603, which pro­vides 1/3 of con­struc­tion costs up front in lieu of tax credits.

The Farm Bill’s Bio­mass Crop Assis­tance Pro­gram (BCAP) forked over hun­dreds more mil­lions for more bio­mass. The Renew­able Elec­tric­i­ty Tax Pro­duc­tion Cred­it bailed out the bio­mass indus­try to the tune of $0.011 per kilo­watt hour, or approx­i­mate­ly $10 per megawatt hour, while fed­er­al loan guar­an­tees under the Depart­ment of Ener­gy fur­nished fur­ther millions.

In April 2012, Oba­ma pledged anoth­er $35 mil­lion for bio­mass and bio­fu­els through the Bio­mass Research and Devel­op­ment Initiative. 

The President’s March 2011 “Ener­gy Blue­print” seeks to “encour­age increased use of bio­fu­els, includ­ing both ethanol and advanced bio­fu­els.” Obama’s speech at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na on Sep­tem­ber 6 made one men­tion of bio­fu­els: “We’re offer­ing a bet­ter path, a future…where farm­ers and sci­en­tists har­ness new bio­fu­els to pow­er our cars and trucks…” 

In a Sep­tem­ber 4 exec­u­tive order, the Pres­i­dent announced his inten­tion to expand com­bined-heat-and-pow­er (CHP) bio­mass facil­i­ties by 40 gigawatts by 2020, a 50% increase from cur­rent lev­els. Specif­i­cal­ly, Oba­ma would push this for­ward through the “pro­mo­tion of util­i­ty part­ner­ships with the CHP industry…[and] the encour­age­ment of effec­tive and inno­v­a­tive CHP poli­cies and financ­ing.” The order states that “it is rea­son­able to expect CHP appli­ca­tions to oper­ate at 65–75 per­cent effi­cien­cy.” Stand alone bio­mass pow­er plants oper­ate at rough­ly 25% efficiency.

Obama’s EPA reg­u­lates green­house gas­es (such as car­bon diox­ide) emit­ted from large-pow­er plants, such as coal burn­ing facil­i­ties. But in July 2011, the EPA allowed bio­mass incin­er­a­tors to con­tin­ue to be per­mit­ted and built for anoth­er three years with­out being sub­ject to the rules that oth­er facil­i­ties now must com­ply with. While the rule effec­tive­ly end­ed the per­mit­ting of new coal pow­er plants, EPA is encour­ag­ing states to allow the burn­ing of bio­mass to be con­sid­ered Best Avail­able Con­trol Tech­nol­o­gy (BACT) for reduc­ing green­house gas­es, so that coal pow­er plants can burn trees—releasing more car­bon diox­ide than they oth­er­wise would—and pre­tend that they’re low­er­ing emissions. 

Two Heads, One Body

When it comes to bioen­er­gy, the stances of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Gov­er­nor Rom­ney are vir­tu­al­ly the same. Both can­di­dates have come togeth­er on an aggres­sive­ly pro-bio­mass and bio­fu­els plat­form that ignores the result­ing increase in lung dis­ease from par­tic­u­late mat­ter emis­sions, the con­tri­bu­tion to run­away cli­mate change, the water­shed degra­da­tion, the for­est destruc­tion, and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate neg­a­tive impacts on low income Amer­i­cans and com­mu­ni­ties of color.

And it goes with­out say­ing that both “major par­ty” can­di­dates ignore the crum­bling foun­da­tion prop­ping up their shaky ener­gy poli­cies as a whole: the impos­si­bil­i­ty of infi­nite growth on a finite planet.