The Ohio Biomess

- by Nathan John­son, Buck­eye For­est Council

News broke on Jan­u­ary 30th that Todd Snitch­ler, chair­man of the Ohio Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion (PUCO) was a keynote speak­er at the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Council’s (ALEC) task-force meet­ing in April 2011. As many read­ers know, ALEC has been aggres­sive­ly push­ing for the repeal of renew­able ener­gy stan­dards at state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try. The PUCO deter­mines whether Ohio-based ener­gy projects, includ­ing bio­mass projects, receive renew­able ener­gy cer­ti­fi­ca­tion enti­tling them to renew­able ener­gy cred­its and sat­is­fac­tion of the state’s renew­able ener­gy portfolio.

More­over, local news reports recent­ly revealed that Chair­man Snitchler’s Twit­ter account is rife with state­ments and re-tweets evi­denc­ing a deep hos­til­i­ty towards all things green and renew­able energy.

High­lights include Snitch­ler retweet­ing a sto­ry titled “Elites of West have cranked up myth of Glob­al Warm­ing” from the Russ­ian news­pa­per Prav­da, call­ing it “inter­est­ing;” tweet­ing that, “clean-ener­gy aid racks up loss­es” and “the Himalayas and near­by peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows”; and retweet­ing “elec­tric cars pose envi­ron­men­tal threat,” ”after Sandy no one lined up for wind tur­bines,” and that the “ ‘green’ reli­gion is tak­ing over from Chris­t­ian religion.”

The dis­cov­ery of Snitchler’s tweets comes at an inter­est­ing time. Snitch­ler joined a 3–1 vote in late Jan­u­ary reject­ing Amer­i­can Elec­tric Pow­er’s pro­pos­al to incor­po­rate pow­er from the Turn­ing Point Solar Project into its renew­able ener­gy port­fo­lio. The vote ignored the advice of com­mis­sion staff and is like­ly to kill the Turn­ing Point Project which, at 50 megawatts, would have been one of the largest solar arrays east of the Mississippi.

The Ohio Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing updates to sev­er­al of its rules, includ­ing rules relat­ing to pub­lic dis­clo­sure. The pub­lic com­ment peri­od for the PUCO’s pro­posed rule pack­age end­ed on Feb­ru­ary 6th. The Buck­eye For­est Coun­cil (BFC) sub­mit­ted com­ments that high­light the lack of trans­paren­cy found in the PUCO’s bio­mass-relat­ed dis­clo­sure requirements.

Cur­rent­ly, util­i­ties oper­at­ing in Ohio are required to dis­close to their cus­tomers the types and amounts of fuel used to gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty they sell in the state. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the PUCO’s cur­rent rules only require that util­i­ties dis­close bio­mass fuel sources under a mono­lith­ic, catch-all cat­e­go­ry called “bio­mass power.”

BFC’s com­ments point out that greater trans­paren­cy is already required by the Gen­er­a­tion Attrib­ut­es Track­ing Sys­tem (GATS), with which Ohio util­i­ties are cur­rent­ly required to reg­is­ter and report. For exam­ple, GATS tracks and dis­clos­es bio­mass resource mix under at least eight sep­a­rate categories:

• Wood: Black Liquor

• Wood: Paper Pel­lets, Rail­road Ties, Util­i­ty Poles, Wood Chips, and oth­er wood solids

• Wood: Red Liquor, Sludge Wood, Spent Sul­fite Liquor, and oth­er wood relat­ed liq­uids not specified

• Oth­er Bio­mass: Digester Gas, Methane, and oth­er bio­mass gases

• Oth­er Bio­mass: Ethanol, Fish Oil, Liq­uid Ace­toni­trile Waste, Med­ical Waste, Tall Oil, Waste Alco­hol, and oth­er bio­mass liq­uids not specified

• Oth­er Bio­mass: Both Ani­mal Manure and Waste, Sol­id Byprod­ucts, and oth­er sol­id bio­mass not specified

• Oth­er Bio­mass: Sludge Waste

• Sol­id Waste: Munic­i­pal Sol­id Waste

In addi­tion, the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (EIA) tracks state-by state bio­mass mix gen­er­a­tion under at least two sep­a­rate cat­e­gories: “Wood and Wood Derived Fuels” and “Oth­er Bio­mass.” In short, infor­ma­tion regard­ing bio­mass fuel mix is read­i­ly avail­able and in fact required report­ing for Ohio util­i­ties via GATS. The PUCO needs to catch up and require more in-depth dis­clo­sure of bio­mass fuel mix­ture to Ohio’s ener­gy consumers.