Tag Archives: climate-change
Biochar: Black Gold or Just Another Snake Oil Scheme?
BY RACHEL SMOLKER – SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 There’s little basis for claims that biochar could solve our energy, food, and climate woes In an interview with Naomi Klein , published in the Autumn 2013 issue of Earth Island Journal , she referred to the American fondness for “win-win solutions.” I had to giggle, having on many occasions sat in on industry-led events, where the speakers, wildly animated, blather on about their latest “win-win-win” technofix, certain to resolve everything that ails humanity, from climate change to poverty, to deforestation to toxic pollution to nuclear waste. Who could be against such hopeful, all-in-one miracle cures? Perhaps only the skeptics who know the smell of snake oil. Which, I guess, includes me. Photo by potaufeu/flickr Field trail results fly in the face of repeated claims that biochar will sequester carbon in soils for tens, hundreds or even thousands of years. I came to such deep skepticism not by nature but from years of experience. One formative experience has been following the hype around biochar. Biochar enthusiasts are a hopeful bunch. They claim that charred biomass will be a win for climate, a win for soils and crop yields, hence a win against hunger and poverty, and a win for renewable energy generation. They are convinced that burning “biomass,” that is, trees, crop residues, animal manure or what have you, (some even advocate burning garbage or tires ), could solve our energy, food, and climate woes. Right away, there is good reason to be skeptical. Burning anything at all seems an unlikely cure for an overheating planet. No matter how it is done, or what is burned, combustion creates pollution — air pollution, particulates, ashes, various toxins and soot, the second largest warming agent after C02. Nonetheless, there are many who embrace biochar and specifically advocate burning things under oxygen starved conditions, via process called pyrolysis, to maximize the production of charred residues. Biochar, they claim, is “black gold.” *** The first key “win” of biochar, proponents say, is that if buried in the ground, the char, which consists largely of carbon, will more or less permanently “sequester” that carbon and therefore help to cleanse the atmosphere. In an article published in the journal, Nature, some of the leading biochar enthusiasts claimed that it could offset global greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 12 percent annually. All that would be required is collecting most forest and agriculture residues and animal manures from across the globe, as well as converting over half a billion hectares (an area larger than India) of land to producing dedicated burnable crops. After collecting it, the biomass would be transported to pyrolysis facilities, burned, then the char would be collected and transported back around the globe where it would be tilled and buried into soils over millions of acres. Year after year. The problem with this idea isn’t just the massive scale of the project, for which there seems little social or political will. It is even more fundamental: There is really little basis for assuming that biochar carbon really will store carbon reliably in soils. A Biofuelwatch review of peer-reviewed field trials as of 2011 showed some remarkably unimpressive results. We only looked at peer-reviewed field trials in order to distinguish clearly between hype and actual results, and to discern how biochar acts in the real world, with living biodiverse soils, rather than sterile, laboratory conditions. Field trails proved rare; only five such studies were found, which between them tested biochar on 11 different combinations of soil and vegetation. In only three cases did biochar result in any additional carbon sequestration. In most cases, there was either no measurable difference in soil carbon, or even a reduction in soil carbon. These results from short-term studies —none spanned more than four years — fly in the face of repeated claims that biochar will sequester carbon in soils for tens, hundreds or even thousands of years. Photo by crustmania/flickr Biochar enthusiasts claim it can improve the quality of the soil and hence improve crop yields and thereby help reduce desertification and deforestation. More recently, two important reviews (you can read them here and here ) of soil carbon showed that the stability of soil carbon is not so much determined by the molecular structure of the carbon itself, but rather by surrounding soil ecosystem properties. That makes reliable carbon storage very difficult to predict or assume. Win number two, biochar enthusiasts claim, is that biochar will also improve the quality of the soil and hence improve crop yields, thereby help reduce desertification, deforestation, hunger, and poverty. Again, Biofuelwatch’s review of peer reviewed field trials showed unimpressive and erratic results. Since then, a recent synthesis review of impact on crop yields found that in half of published studies, there was either no effect whatsoever on crop yields, or biochar actually reduced yields. The third win, according to advocates, is generating renewable electricity and heat during pyrolysis. But so far, virtually all biochar has been produced without doing so. That’s because pyrolysis is difficult to control and remains largely unproven for commercial application. Another reason is the inherent trade off: If you want more biochar less biomass will be converted to heat and power, and vice versa. None of these trial results have dampened the hopes of biochar enthusiasts, who still see wins everywhere they look. They continue to promote biochar as a means to reduce fertilizer demand, agricultural runoff, clean up waste water, reclaim mine sites, and offset fossil fuel pollution. Some have even advocated feeding it to cows to make them emit less gas, and one company even claims that biochar will make it possible for consumers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even while driving big gas-guzzling cars. (see below). In her Journal interview Klien also spoke about climate geoengineering, which she referred to as a proverbial “escape hatch” providing a way to avoid the consequences of our failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is indeed one of the most perilous hazards of the geoengineering mindset. Widespread doubts about geoengineering have resulted in a push to accept “more benign” technologies, including large-scale biochar and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Both biochar and BECCS require burning lots of biomass — trees and crops, as well as municipal solid waste. Staggering quantities would have to be harvested and burned to have any measureable impact on the global atmosphere. Studies have shown that capturing just one billion tonnes of carbon per year would require conversion of up to 990 million hectares of land to plantations. The consequences for land, water, soils, biodiversity, would very likely render the treatment worse than the disease. What is already painfully evident is that demand for biomass, even at the current smaller scale is already stripping Earth of her remaining biodiverse ecosystems, and replacing them with industrial, chemically-dependent monoculture deserts. Another article in the Journal’s recent issue, “ Modified Stands ,” talks about the push for genetically engineered trees. The impetus behind GE trees is a projected dramatic increase in demand for wood, in large part for bioenergy. This demand is a result of subsidies and supports for renewable energy that fail to distinguish between the kind of renewable energy that requires constant inputs of fuel (wood etc) and combustion, and the kind that does not. The l ion’s share of subsidies and supports has gone to bioenergy, including biofuels and biomass burning for electricity, which can conveniently be done 24/7 in coal plants, or stand alone facilities. Windmills and solar panels are more fussy , expensive, and their production cycles are intermittent. To get a sense of the scale and impact of using bioenergy, consider that in the United Kingdom alone, current and proposed biomass burning for energy would require over 80 million tons of wood, more than eight times the amount of wood produced for all purposes domestically. There is now an expanding international trade in wood chips and pellets to satisfy this voracious demand from the UK and other European countries. Tree plantations and native forests in the southeastern United States and Canada are being cut, pelletized and shipped to Europe to be burned as “renewable energy.” The wood pellet industry is booming, and fast growing monoculture plantations — which could soon include GE trees, are in great demand. Biochar enthusiasts usually insist they won’t cut forests or convert ecosystems to provide burnable biomass. Just like the biomass electricity industry, they prefer to talk about burning “wastes and residues.” But there is no such thing as “waste” in a forest ecosystem — all is recycled, via decay, to support regeneration and regrowth. In many places, definitions of waste have been expanded to include virtually any wood that is not valued as sawlogs, so timber harvests are more intense and destructive. In agriculture, there are often better options for residues, such as compost, mulch, animal fodder, and bedding. In any case, industrial forestry and agriculture practices have already wreaked havoc on ecosystems. Creating a market for the waste products of unsustainable practices hardly seems a step in the right direction. *** Photo by Engineering for Change A biomass briquette. There is an inherent trade off between using biomass to produce biochar vs using it to produce energy: If you want more biochar less biomass will be converted to heat and power, and vice versa. So far, biochar has not gained the subsidies and investments needed to scale it up commercially. Biochar advocates initially worked to gain funding from carbon markets, arguing that biochar could “offset” fossil fuel pollution, but with the recent decline of global carbon markets they have largely retreated seeking carbon financing. Instead, they are now pushing biochar as a niche product for small-scale and organic farmers. The good news is that most small-scale farmers are closely attuned to what works on their farms and will judge for themselves. The bad news is that they are largely unaware that they are to some extent being used to promote an eventual massive scale-up of the biochar industry. In 2008-09, for example, a high-profile biochar project in Cameroon run by Biochar Fund, a Belgian nonprofit, promised to alleviate poverty and improve nutritional status of poor farmers by improving crop yields. The farmers donated land and labor, and were told they would be compensated with finance from carbon markets. The first set of trials were proclaimed wildly successful without any independent verification. Then the trials were abandoned without even informing the farmers. Biochar Fund moved on and was granted funds for yet another set of trials in Congo. This time the claim was that biochar would enable slash and burn agriculturalists to do less slashing and burning because the soils would be enriched with biochar. So far, there are no reports of the status of those trials. (Read Biofuelwatch’s investigative report about the Cameroon project here. ) Just as with biomass electricity, biochar enthusiasts claim that burning biomass is “carbon neutral” – that the carbon released during combustion will be reabsorbed by new trees or crops. This claim has been soundly and repeatedly refuted . Trees take years to regrow, assuming that they even do so. Cutting natural forests for biomass electricity, or biochar, or any other use results in a massive “ carbon debt ” that can take decades or even centuries to repay (i.e. for an equivalent amount of carbon to be reabsorbed in new tree growth). Biochar advocates continue to cling to the carbon neutral myth nonetheless. In fact, they take it a step further. Burying the carbon char in soils, they say, will permanently store some of the carbon, so regrowth will absorb additional (not just replacement) carbon. This, they say, makes it carbon negative. This misguided logic is what lies behind claims by companies like Cool Planet that consumers can clean the atmosphere by driving more. The California-based biofuel and biochar company seeks to make transportation fuels from wood, which they say is “carbon neutral,” and then bury the char residue from their production process, thus renderning the entire process “carbon negative.” By Cool Planet’s logic, driving more could actually reduce carbon emissions. That kind of “win” has an especially outstanding appeal. Cool Planet has won significant corporate backing from BP, ConocoPhillips, General Electric, and Google among others, and is now looking at opening two new facilities in Louisiana. The logical conclusion for biomass electricity or biochar, from a purely carbon accounting perspective is that we should burn things that grow faster and therefore incur a shorter “carbon debt.” GE eucalyptus perhaps? Clearly it is not very helpful to reduce the whole affair of climate change to counting carbon molecules. Forests, soils, ecosystems all are far more than agglomerations of carbon. They are intricate, multidimensional, interconnected, and complex beyond our imaginings and hence beyond our ability to measure, manipulate, and control. The reductionist mindset that carbon accountants engage with is a dead end that only serves to blind us to the full scope and range of Earth as a whole. It fails to see that this planet is more than the sum of its parts. If we are really serious about preserving life on Earth, we will have to relearn how to envision the whole, embrace humility in the face of our ignorance about how life-supporting earth systems work. No amount of biochar, no climate geoengineering tricks, no technofixes or markets or “private sector engagement” or fancy carbon accounting will be a “win win win” for us. By far the winning strategy would be to allow Earth to restore, regenerate and recover, on her own terms. Continue reading
Taxpayers Turn U.S. Farmers Into Fat Cats With Subsidies
By David J. Lynch & Alan Bjerga – Sep 9, 2013 A Depression-era program intended to save American farmers from ruin has grown into a 21st-century crutch enabling affluent growers and financial institutions to thrive at taxpayer expense. Federal crop insurance encourages farmers to gamble on risky plantings in a program that has been marred by fraud and that illustrates why government spending is so difficult to control. Enlarge image Corn field in Le Roy, Illinois, on Sept. 11, 2012. Corn output in the U.S., the world’s largest grower, fell due to the worst drought in more than 50 years. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg And the cost is increasing. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last year spent about $14 billion insuring farmers against the loss of crop or income, almost seven times more than in fiscal 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service . The arrangement is a good deal for everyone but taxpayers. The government pays 18 approved insurance companies to run the program, pays farmers to buy coverage and pays the bills if losses exceed predetermined limits. Slideshow: How Farmers Harvest U.S. Taxpayer Dollars With a showdown over the nation’s finances — and a possible government shutdown — looming this fall, the growing insurance tab is a bipartisan target. President Barack Obama sought this year to cut almost $12 billion from the program over the next decade while his ideological opposite, Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan , has called subsidized insurance “crony capitalism.” Lobbyists Win Yet the president and the Republicans’ chief budget expert are no match for the farm and insurance lobbies, which spent at least $52 million influencing lawmakers in the 2012 election cycle. Rather than thin the most expensive strand in the nation’s farm safety net, Congress is poised to funnel billions of dollars more to individuals who already are more prosperous than the typical American. “We have been subsidizing some of the farmers who least need it in a way that is really costing taxpayers a lot of money,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat of New Hampshire. “We’re never going to solve our budget challenges if that’s what we’re doing.” Crop insurers and the USDA say that the subsidized insurance helps stabilize food prices for consumers while protecting farmers from weather-related losses. The program insured $117 billion worth of crops last year, including almost all the corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat grown in the U.S. Capping Subsidies Unlike direct farm aid payments, which are capped at $40,000 per farm, there is no limit on crop insurance subsidies. The names of those receiving payouts from the program are kept secret. There’s little chance the program will be restructured, since a permanent insurance mechanism spares politicians from approving ad-hoc farm bailouts that CRS says have cost taxpayers more than $50 billion since 2000. The heavily-discounted insurance incentivizes farmers to cultivate marginal acres that may or may not be fertile. And the program’s been vulnerable to fraud , notably in North Carolina where a network of insurance agents, claims adjusters and farmers bilked the government of close to $100 million over more than a decade. “The crop insurance program is terrible budget policy,” says William Frenzel, a 10-term Republican representative from Minnesota who served on the House Budget Committee and now analyzes fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution . “It’s the kind of congressional back-scratching that got us into our debt and deficit situation.” Risk Factor This is the first in a series of articles examining the U.S. crop insurance program, which advocates say is essential to the nation’s food supply and critics assail as wasteful corporate welfare. Other installments will examine how private insurance companies benefit from public assistance, the record North Carolina fraud and the program’s impact on the environment. Crop insurance, intended to safeguard farmers from natural disasters, has mutated into an income support mechanism that almost eliminates risk from agriculture, say critics such as Vincent Smith , a professor of agricultural economics at Montana State University. When last year’s drought drove corn prices to record highs, farmers with “harvest price option” policies were paid those inflated prices for what didn’t grow — contributing to a record bill for taxpayers and record income for farmers. “There is no social justification for these subsidies,” says Smith. “This is a program that’s fundamentally designed to give money to farmers.” Dustbowl Legacy Federal crop insurance began in the shadow of the 1930s Dust Bowl, which scorched the soil and left farmers impoverished. Until 1980, when the government began paying about one-third of farmers’ premiums, few farmers participated. In 2000, Congress made the subsidies more generous , so that farmers now pay only about 38 percent of their insurance bills or more than $4 billion in 2012. By last year, almost 1.2 million policies covering 282 million acres of farmland were in force. Each year, farmers choose from a menu of insurance options — and by law, insurers are obligated to cover all who apply. More than seven in 10 policies guarantee income rather than yield. The Washington-based Environmental Working Group, which supports more federal aid for conservation, says subsidies give farmers an incentive to buy “Cadillac” policies that over-insure their holdings and drive up costs. Some policies protect as much as 85 percent of a farm’s average yield. Record Income Taxpayers are helping farmers pay their bills even as farm income this year is expected to top $120 billion , its highest inflation-adjusted mark since 1973, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service . Farm income has doubled over the past four years thanks to rising land values and surging exports. In 2011, the median income of commercial farm households — those deriving more than half their income from farming — was $84,649, almost 70 percent higher than that of the typical American household. Even as manufacturers and retailers struggle to rebound from the recession that ended four years ago, farm equity ended 2012 at $2.5 trillion , up 37 percent since the start of the recession in December 2007 — compared with a less than 1 percent gain in net worth for all U.S. households over the same period. Citing “the record-breaking prosperity of American farmers,” Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said in March that “taxpayers should not finance payments for a business sector that is more than capable of thriving on its own.” Policy Shift The planned expansion of crop insurance reflects a decisive move in the nation’s farm policy away from direct payments to farmers, which would be eliminated by pending farm legislation after averaging about $5 billion annually since 2005. The Congressional Budget Office says crop insurance will cost taxpayers about $90 billion over the next decade. If droughts like last year’s become more frequent, that could prove a conservative estimate: A February USDA report warned that even if greenhouse gases tied to climate change stabilize, “land surface temperatures will continue to rise for decades,” permanently altering planting zones. Advocates say that with direct payments ending, crop insurance is all that stands between farmers and the unpredictable forces of nature. In the event of ruinous drought or disease, the program automatically disburses aid, often within 30 days, much faster than ad hoc bailouts, which can take more than a year. Farmers’ Tool Without government-subsidized insurance, financially-hobbled farmers might take land in and out of production, causing food prices to gyrate, according to Tom Zacharias, president of the National Crop Insurance Services, an industry group, who says the insurance costs about two cents per meal. In an interview, Brandon Willis, administrator of the USDA’s Risk Management Agency , cited a University of Nebraska study that said crop insurance payments last year supported 20,900 jobs in four farm states. “More and more, crop insurance is the tool farmers rely on,” he said. With new farm legislation stalled on Capitol Hill , largely over Republican demands for deeper cuts in food stamp spending, the cost of crop insurance is drawing fire from both ends of the political spectrum. The Environmental Working Group says the insurance encourages farmers to make riskier plantings , secure in the knowledge they will be paid even if the crops fail. The free-market Club for Growth, meanwhile, derides the program as a government handout for millionaire farmers. Wells Fargo, Ace Even some beneficiaries are uneasy. “I like to think of myself as an independent who’s willing to take risk,” says farmer Jim Handsaker, 65, of Story City, Iowa. “With insurance, it takes the risk out of it.” The Risk Management Agency determines the policies’ costs and terms, while leaving marketing and claims payment to private companies. That means there’s no real price competition among the 18 approved insurers. The government doled out $1.4 billion last year to cover the administrative costs incurred by the companies, including a unit of Wells Fargo & Co (WFC) , the nation’s fourth largest bank, Ace Ltd. (ACE) of Switzerland, which reported a $2.7 billion profit last year, and Great American Insurance Co., a unit of the Cincinnati-based American Financial Group. Handsaker, a genial fan of the broadcaster Rush Limbaugh , farms about 3,400 acres of corn and soybeans with his brothers and sons. He says he paid about $70,000 to $80,000 in crop insurance premiums last year. The taxpayers paid even more — since an average of almost two-thirds of premium costs are paid by the government. No Competition “I have a lot of problems with the federal crop program,” Handsaker said as he sat in the kitchen of his one-story home, a Cadillac sedan parked outside. “It doesn’t matter who you purchase it from, it’s the same.” Subsidized insurance also gives farmers an incentive to plant on land where crops may or may not flourish, he said, adding that he knew individuals in South Dakota who are “farming the program” with the intent of making an insurance claim rather than harvesting a crop. The program’s formula for determining insurance premiums also “has created brittle farming operations that lack resilience and a spiral of ever-increasing taxpayer-subsidized” losses, according to an August report from the Natural Resources Defense Council , a New York-based environmental group. ‘Unproductive Land’ Democratic Representative Ron Kind of Wisconsin expects that trend to worsen. “You’re going to see a lot of unproductive land brought into production because the taxpayer will cover the losses from all these riskless decisions,” said Kind, whose proposal to limit program subsidies fell 10 votes short of passage in June. “My concern is that this is eliminating all risk.” Participating farmers must comply with “good farming practices” and are not reimbursed for losses due to negligence, said John Shea, an RMA spokesman. In 2011, the latest year for which data is available, 26 farmers each got annual subsidies of more than $1 million; more than 10,000 received $100,000 or more. One grower of tomatoes and peppers in Florida enjoyed a subsidy of $1.9 million, according to the Environmental Working Group . Congress has barred the USDA from revealing the identities of payout recipients. In April, Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget recommended slicing $11.7 billion from the program over the next decade by raising out-of-pocket costs for farmers and cutting administrative subsidies for insurers. Ryan, too, has called for trimming program spending. Bullet-Proof Instead, the House-approved farm measure would expand crop insurance to guarantee as much as 90 percent of a farm’s income and extend coverage to peanut farms while the Senate bill covers farmers against even the modest losses they currently pay out of pocket. Shaheen, the Democratic senator from New Hampshire, failed to persuade her colleagues to cap premium subsidies at $50,000, which she says could save $3.4 billion over 10 years. A glimpse at lobbying filings explains why the program is bullet-proof in Congress. The 43 groups that wrote a joint letter to members of the Senate in March defending crop insurance collectively spent more than $52 million on lobbying during the 2012 election cycle, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Sunlight Foundation. One signatory, the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, reported spending $1.6 million on lobbying last year and identified five registered lobbyists working on the program. Individual companies including Ace, with $2.2 million, and Deere & Co. (DE) , with $1.4 million, cited crop insurance in their lobbying reports. Funding Lawmakers Agribusiness employees also have been generous in funding political campaigns, contributing $91 million to candidates in the 2012 elections, up from $70 million four years earlier, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group. In Nevada, Iowa, Mark Kenney, 33, raises corn, soybeans and oats on about 3,000 acres as yellow Union Pacific locomotives rumble west through the nearby fields. He defends crop insurance as the best response to the vicissitudes of farming. “Would you rather pay a dime now or a dollar later?” Kenney asks. “Of all the industries to be involved in, the security of our food, fuel and fiber is of the greatest importance.” Kenney, whose $150,000 premium represents roughly 10 percent of his total costs, says he doesn’t have much faith in alternative tools for managing risk , including financial contracts such as futures and options. Dropping Coverage? Premiums last year accounted for no more than 10 percent of corn growers’ average production costs of $349 per acre, said Bruce Babcock, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University . Farmers spent far more on seed, fertilizer, fuel and electricity. If premium subsidies were reduced, many farmers would consider canceling their policies. “If we had to pay what they say they subsidize, most of us wouldn’t have crop insurance because we couldn’t afford it,” says Mike Brown , 63, who along with his son Tanner farms 7,300 acres in Colby, Kansas. “Crop insurance is costing you $15 to $20 an acre. If they took all the subsidies out, it would be $50 to $60 an acre.” Crop insurance funding will be determined when lawmakers reconcile competing House and Senate versions of the farm law. Congress faces a deadline of Sept. 30 to make a deal or extend a current stopgap funding measure. Off the table: whether federally backed crop insurance should exist at all. “We shouldn’t look at crop insurance as the least evil policy,” says Josh Sewell, senior policy analyst with Washington-based research group Taxpayers for Common Sense . “It’s not like our choice is to send checks one way or send checks another way. We could just not send checks.” To contact the reporters on this story: David J. Lynch in Washington at dlynch27@bloomberg.net ; Alan Bjerga in Washington at abjerga@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Ellis at Dellis5@bloomberg.net Jon Morgan in Washington at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net Continue reading
Biomass: Head To Head Debating Pros And Cons
Is biomass a viable part of the future energy mix, or is it part of the carbon emissions problem? Eoin Redahan asked two industry experts. Stewart Boyle (SB) runs the consultancy arm of South East Wood Fuels Duncan Law (DL) represents Biofuelwatch, an NGO that raises awareness of the negative impacts of industrial biofuels and bioenergy. Stewart Boyle The pro biomass perspective – SB I spent 18 months on research into the potential and reality of bio-energy in the UK. Its advantages are real, in that it provides versatility (offering heating, cooling, power generation, transport fuels and bio-chemicals), reliability (no problems with intermittency), and is sustainable and cost-effective. It could provide 10–20% of our energy by 2030–2040 – three times the output of nuclear power. Bio-energy is a critical renewable option in allowing the clear transition to lowcarbon hybrid vehicles, de-carbonising power and shifting to green gas. To achieve its potential we need a significant effort to educate, show how it offers an integrated energy solution, and argue head-on the bad science arguments being used against it. From a support position five years ago, many environmental NGOs now oppose biofuels, pure biopower and co-firing. One NGO, Biofuelwatch, says bio-energy leads to forest destruction – witness its attitudes on palm oil and kernels for biofuels – and suggests that Drax (the UK’s largest power station, which co-fires biomass) mostly uses old growth forest from North America. This is utter tosh and the Drax team should be applauded, not criticised, for its cradle-to-grave sustainability system. I spent a big chunk of my earlier life working for several NGOs. However, I think many are biased, use bad science and have lost the plot on bio-energy. Duncan Law The anti biomass perspective – DL Under the guise of renewable energy and carbon saving, burning wood in power stations is a massive growth industry in the UK right now. Huge old coal power stations such as Drax are getting UK Government subsidies to burn millions of tonnes of imported wood at 37% efficiency, but can only use good quality wood with low bark content – not pure forest wastes. Burning wood emits even more carbon than burning coal for a given amount of energy generated (especially when whole trees are used). Forests take up to a century to absorb as much CO2 as is emitted when they are burned. So emissions will actually rise. The DECC now acknowledges that burning biomass in dedicated power stations offers poor-value carbon savings compared with wind power or even gas. Yet they offer huge subsidies. Current UK biomass burning plans are projected to demand nearly the entire global biomass trade by 2025. Most of it currently comes from the USA and Canada where biodiverse, old-growth forests are being clear felled and replaced with monoculture tree plantations. Biomass also produces more small particulate pollution than coal, which can have grave public health impacts. Minister Ed Davey, UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said, ‘Making electricity from biomass based on imported wood is not a long-term answer to our energy needs – I am quite clear about that’. Biomass is not an answer. It pollutes, is costly, inefficient, does not contribute to UK energy security, damages biodiversity and forests, and makes climate change worse. SL: I disagree with virtually all of Duncan’s comments on bioenergy. Take the carbon debt issue – the supposed scientific basis of much NGO opposition. Duncan says, ‘Forests take up to a century to absorb as much CO2 as is emitted when they are burned’. In my opinion, this is misleading. While cutting and then replacing a single tree or small stand of trees will take some time for the CO2 to be absorbed, guess what? Foresters know that. A well-managed forest has a wide range of trees – some mature and ready for felling, others in mid-growth and absorbing lots of CO2, plus newly planted trees. When DECC researchers looked at the issue, they concluded, ‘Providing forest stands are re-established as soon as they are clear-felled, overall carbon stocks in the forest are not reduced [no carbon debt is incurred]. Rather, a constant carbon stock is maintained over time.’ Using low-quality wood materials that have no competing uses, Drax clearly demonstrates substantial carbon savings of well over 70%. That Drax ‘mostly’ uses wood from clear-felled old growth forests is simply not true. Duncan references this from a single BBC radio programme, but any independent audit of Drax’s biomass materials would refute the suggestion. No one argues that co-firing is the end game. Other technologies are coming fast. It does, however, offer reliable, lower-cost carbon reductions quickly to gain momentum and investment into this and second-generation technologies. Arguing for perfection now in bio-energy will kill off key solutions to our climate crisis and invite in shale gas, nuclear and extreme oil. DL: Biofuelwatch has been working for seven years on this issue. We follow the plot of the bioenergy industry closely. To counter just one of Stewart’s specific assertions – Drax bases its optimistic 70% carbon savings from biomass on using ‘forest wastes that would simply be burnt in the forest’ (Paul Taylor, Drax Director). Freedom of Information evidence shows they can only use wood from slow growing trees that have a low bark content. Drax is using pellets from whole trees. Dogwood Alliance (a forest protection network) has documented clear-felling of old-growth forest for the energy industry. Peer-reviewed evidence shows that rates of global forest cover loss in southeast USA are among the highest globally. Conversion to tree plantations causes huge emissions. All this equals carbon debt. The impossibility of real sustainability assessment in the biomass industry is documented in a Biofuelwatch report. Vast Government subsidies and the Green Investment Bank loan to Drax extend the coalburning life of this plant by years. And the biomass will increase, not reduce, its real carbon emissions. Biomass is the easy option for the Government and industry to avoid a supply crunch and keep the lights on by using existing technologies. The vast ambitions of the bio-energy industry disregard unintended consequences. It is set to expand in a way that is dangerous and unsustainable. Biofuelwatch opposes big bioenergy because the impacts are unacceptably dangerous, both in terms of current carbon emissions and damage to the planet’s life support systems. It is a distraction from rethinking our demand and our energy systems for a real low-carbon future. Both speakers referred to different sources to back up their statements. For a full list of sources, visit our blog: materialsworld.tumblr.com What do you think? Which of the two speakers convinced you most? Are there any other important issues that should be addressed? Email or tweet us your comments at: materials.world@iom3.org or @materialsworld or if you are logged in, comment below. Author : Eoin Redahan Materials World Magazine, 01 Sep 2013 – See more at: http://www.iom3.org/…h.GbKH9FL2.dpuf Continue reading
