Modeshift

Among the accumulated roles I play is to report and write what the New York Times calls “advances,” short for advance obituaries of prominent people. The Times has a list of completed advances that numbers around 1,400, roughly 30 of which I’ve completed. It likely sounds ghoulish to most people, but writing about well-known players on the national stage is often an efficient way to understand a place or an era or both.

Today Daryl Gates, the former Los Angeles police chief whose work as a tough law and order enforcer ended in the aftermath of the worst riot in modern American history, died in California. The Times’ obituary is here.

As the 40th anniversary of Earth Day draws closer, wind energy developers in Massachusetts are awaiting word from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about a permit to proceed. Cape Wind, which wants to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm near Nantucket, earlier this month reached agreement with Siemens to purchase 130 turbines, a move praised by Massachusetts Democratic Governor Deval Patrick and Ian Bowles, the Massachusetts secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

It’s difficult to see how the Obama administration, which pressed for more than $100 billion in clean energy investment in last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus bill), would disapprove the Cape Wind permit. The project, though, has come under fire from the Kennedys and other prominent Massachusetts families. And the fight over whether to proceed has gone on for most of a decade.

Like Michigan, some Massachusetts citizens and grassroots environmental organizations are fighting the advent of the clean energy transition with everything they’ve got. Massachusetts last year put a moratorium on wood biomass development pending the completion of an independent analysis of the risks that is due to be finished by June 1. And wind projects are not only opposed off Nantucket. Several more on Cape Cod have come under fire from citizens.

In Michigan, meanwhile, offshore wind projects in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have raised concerns, largely due to aesthetic reasons. And a state-of-the-art wood biomass plant has caused a small ruckus in Traverse City, where critics assert it will result in a “slaughter” of the state’s forest. Fuss disclosure: I am assisting the utility in its public communications and engagement strategy.

A friend of mine, a prominent editor in Traverse City, called the other day to express is his dismay at the stridency, crazy facts, outright wrong assertions and scare tactics, even extremism deployed by a number of environmental voices in the biomass debate. “I always believed that what lay behind so much of the local environmental movement here was just NIMBYism,” he said. “This debate has just confirmed it.”

Indeed, it’s not a proud moment for those of us who’ve been involved a long time and sweat the details of public campaigning, applying real facts, reason, maturity and pragmatism in struggles as important as the clean energy transition is to northern Michigan, the state, and the nation.

– Keith Schneider

Today diplomats and climate action specialists met in Bonn for the first international climate meeting since the Copenhagen summit in December. April in fact marks the start of an intensifying schedule of global negotiating sessions on climate action, and on the international economy.

NGO climate leaders from USCAN and our member organizations are in Bonn. Among the many things they are doing is to help make the case to delegates that at the very moment that the climate crisis and the global economic crisis have collided there are ready steps to solve both.

Over 100 nations that associated themselves with the Copenhagen Accord have already agreed to investing substantial sums in international finance to help developing nations make the transition to a low-carbon economy and have committed to emissions limits to hold the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius. Also G-20 nations agreed to end subsidies for fossil fuel development at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh last year.

There will be more opportunity in the coming weeks for NGO experts to convince global leaders. On April 18, the Obama administration hosts the two-day Major Economies Forum in Washington. Five days later finance ministers meet in Washington to decide priorities and the agenda for the G-20 meeting in Toronto. In late November, Cancun, Mexico hosts the 16th UN climate conference. The idea that ties them all together is that the threatened global environment and the frayed global economy share a common source: profligate use of increasingly expensive and polluting fossil fuel. The transition to a cleaner, low-carbon economy not only reduces the climate risk, it also invites innovation, new tools and practices, and many more new jobs.

The focus of the Bonn meeting, which ends on Sunday, is process and procedure. The meeting has the important task of deciding meetings, priorities, and dates for the 2010 global climate negotiations calendar. Delegates also are faced with a difficult diplomatic puzzle left over from Copenhagen. How can the agreements outlined in the Copenhagen Accord, which some nations dislike, merge with the ornate UNFCCC process and framework, which is supported by nearly 200 nations?

Also this week, a group of 3,000 national and grassroots companies – among them Google, Nike, and Timberland – launched a new national advertising campaign calling for swift action on energy and climate legislation. The ads, which are appearing in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina and Florida anticipate the introduction this month of climate and energy legislation in the Senate, and urge Congress to enact a bipartisan bill that “increases our security and limits emissions, as it preserves and creates jobs.”

Eartha Jane Melzer, one of the reporters in Michigan whose work merits close attention, posted a piece a week ago on Michigan Messenger that described the legal work the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council are doing to block a big new coal-fired power plant in Bay City.

Here is one of the important events associated with the transition to the clean energy economy. On one hand environmental organizations are pursuing legal suits and other actions in and out of Michigan to block new coal-fired utilities. More than 100 new coal-fired plant proposals have been halted, according to the Sierra Club. Last year at the Democratic National Convention I had a chance to speak to Carl Pope, then the Club’s executive director. He confirmed my sense that the Beyond Coal campaign was the most successful grassroots organizing project in the Sierra Club’s 118-year history.

That’s a good thing for the planet and the advent of the transition away from polluting, expensive, and obsolete fossil fuel.

On the other hand citizen groups, NIMBY’s, and other local advocates have joined with a number of grassroots environmental organizations around the nation, including one in Traverse City, and are seeking to block important clean and renewable alternatives. I’ve been writing about the grassroots push back here on Mode Shift. I became interested — full disclosure — after Traverse City Light & Power asked me to help them design and execute a public information and engagement program to enable citizens to help choose an appropriate renewable energy path.

I’ve found that all of the clean energy alternatives are under pressure — wind, solar, geothermal, transmission lines, and biomass here in Michigan. Even efforts to improve energy efficiency are having a hard time being implemented in communities. The WSJ wrote a piece about that earlier this year from Boulder, Colo.

For the moment and the foreseeable future utilities in Michigan and the Midwest have five choices to supply baseload energy — the kind that runs 24/7, 365, which is not yet available with wind and solar. They have coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear, and wood biomass.

In almost every case in which alternatives are under challenge, Traverse City included, the default position for utilities is more coal or more natural gas. Efficiency and conservation gets you part of the way to a solution, but only part of the way. Power is still needed for families and businesses and industry.

The Traverse City utility has bought wind, bought landfill gas, investigated solar, and proposes to build a state of the art, clean-burning (much cleaner than coal), efficient combined heat and power, right-scaled (10 mw), home-grown (fits the region’s move to local foods, local regional land use and transportation plan), gasification wood biomass plant fueled by waste wood from Michigan’s timber and forest industry. It would employ 20 to manage the plant and 20 involved in supplying fuel. Among the array of available alternatives to Michigan’s coal-fired power plants, a state-of-the-art plant that burns wood at small scale seems to me to be a prudent way to proceed.

I recognize this is tough stuff. In my career as a grassroots environmental advocate, and founder and former executive director of the Michigan Land Use Institute, when we got in the way of a Wal-Mart (Charlevoix, early 2000s,) the region retained a wetland and an intact downtown business center. When we replaced bypasses in Petoskey and Traverse City, we got back intact wild rivers, forests, and land use and transportation plans designed to foster more compact and prosperous communities. When we helped kill proposals to drill for natural gas and oil along the Lake Michigan and Lake Huron shorelines, we preserved some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

When grassroots environmental organizations oppose a right-scaled, local, state-of-the-art, clean-burning wood biomass plant their “win” is no victory at all. If they succeed we all get more coal, likely from the same new plants that their major environmental organization brothers are trying to block.

– Keith Schneider

The director of the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth last week lauded Traverse City Light & Power for pursuing a renewable energy strategy that fits northwest Michigan’s reputation as a green region, and “complements all the assets and progressive trends this region represents”. Stanley “Skip” Pruss, who is one of Governor Jennifer Granholm’s closest advisors and a nationally known clean energy leader, also supported the utility’s proposal to generate a portion of its renewable energy from a state-of-the-art combined heat and power wood biomass plant, calling it “a tremendous asset.”

“If this community were to do that,” Pruss said, “if TCL&P were to do that, it would be a precedent-setting achievement that we would commend other utilities to emulate. That is real leadership.” (See a full transcript of his remarks here.)

April 7 Meeting Concludes Public Process
Pruss visit came less than a week before the last of the three public forums that TCL&P has held to invite public comment on its plan to acquire 30 percent of its energy from local renewable resources by 2020. Pruss cited the utility’s public communications and engagement process, during which TCL&P has asked its customers and citizens to help choose the appropriate renewable resource, “as absolutely commendable.” Full disclosure: I’ve spent several hours a week since January as a communications and engagement strategist to help TCL&P draw up and execute the public process.

When asked directly by a board member and a citizen whether TCL&P should heed calls from some members of the community to slow the process and delay a decision on building a state-of-the-art biomass plant, Pruss was direct: “There are choices to be made. I would be disinclined to wait a year or two before you act. I think you should be aggressive.” (See attached transcript)

Pruss is leading Michigan’s new economic strategy, which relies on developing renewable energy resources, clean vehicles, and the tools and practices to move from fossil fuels to clean energy. He said over the next 15 months or so Michigan will see nearly $14 billion in clean energy investment, most of it for new plants downstate to manufacture lithium ion battery technology to power vehicles and store energy.

Benefits and Burdens
Pruss was effusive in outlining his support for the utility’s 30BY20 plan, which he said was at the leading edge of the state’s transition. He also described what he called the “benefits and burdens” of pursuing wind, solar, and biomass, acknowledging that there were no perfect technologies.

Pruss described one concern he had about wood biomass as a fuel source for new power plants. He noted that the state is aware of proposed biomass plants in northern Michigan capable of generating almost 200 megawatts of power. The TCL&P proposed plant would generate 10 mw.

“Here is my concern with biomass,” Pruss said, “not that we don’t have the supply and not that we can’t harvest that supply and deliver it in a sustainable way. We can. The concern is that we have a lot of potential biomass fuel projects both for combustion and biofuels, more of the former than the latter. But there are new projects that pop up. If they do advance they would be competing for the same supply. We don’t know a whole lot about price sensitivity except there is price sensitivity at some point in time.”

Sustainable Forestry
Michigan State University and Michigan Tech are working with DELEG on a major study to better understand how to apply the state’s enormous forest resources – they are larger than all but four other states – to biomass generation for electricity and for biofuels. Other states, among them Massachusetts where similar concerns about forest sustainability have been raised, also are conducting intensive assessments.

“What government can do and should do, and what we are doing — we’re building the capacity with our universities,” Pruss said. “We have consultants doing this. We are spending a lot of money to say this is how much biomass we have. This is our best calculation. This is how much there is. So you can plan and know how much is out there on a sustainable basis.”

The TCL&P wood biomass proposal merits state support, said Pruss, because of the plant’s design. TCL&P proposes to build a plant that generates electricity and steam, what engineers refer to as “cogeneration,” or “combined heat and power.”

The proposed TCL&P biomass plant, which would operate as cleanly as a natural gas-fired plant, and much cleaner than a coal-fired utility, would also be twice as energy efficient as a conventional biomass plant. Its construction would generate jobs and its operation would produce permanent jobs and keep $4 million in the community each year that is currently going to Wyoming, railroads, and a coal-fired utility in Lansing.

An Example For The State
“Your plant, I’m guessing, is 70 to 80 percent efficient,” said Pruss. “That is huge. That means you’re going to be twice as energy efficient as anything out there. I think that so important. That is part of the calculus in the equation of benefits and burden. The fact that your plant is going to be so energy efficient is great. I want you to be an example for other communities around the state.”

“With respect to your plan – because it involves cogeneration which doubles the efficiency of the plant – that is hugely important,” Pruss said. “I know Governor Granholm and I would like that plant to proceed.”

Linda Johnson, chair of the Light & Power board, said after the meeting that she was pleased with Pruss’ analysis of the board’s plans. She also shrugged off criticism that Light & Power was rushing into a decision, noting that board members have been studying biomass since 2005 during a tour of energy plants in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden.

“We have not been in a rush,” she said. “We have been doing this for four years, and it’s taken us this long to establish what our needs are. To just sit back and do nothing would be irresponsible at this point.”

– Keith Schneider with Steve Kellman, who is a former reporter for the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

Stanley “Skip” Pruss, the director of the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth and a nationally regarded clean energy leader, was in Traverse City last week.

The visit came the day after EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the federal government would use the Clean Water Act to tame the rapacious mining practices in the Appalachian coal belt involving removing the tops of mountains. Jackson is proposing to lower limits on salinity in mountain streams to level that could make it economically impractical to tear the tops of mountains away. Pruss visit also came just a few days before a coal mine exploded in West Virginia, killing 25 men, and illustrating once again the enormous human consequences of fueling America’s need with million-year-old carbon.

Here in Michigan, the transition to a clean energy economy makes sense on too many levels to adequately describe here. Let’s just say that the market and resource foundations of the drive through economy that Michigan invented in the 20th century aren’t working well in the 21st. Pruss, who is one of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s closest advisors — he served in the Attorney General’s office with her — was charged by the governor to jump start Michigan’s new economic era. He’s done well. Michigan put in place a modest renewable portfolio standard — 10 percent by 2015 — and has recruited a number of new clean energy manufacturers to join those already based here.

One of the projects that Pruss supports now is Traverse City Light & Power’s plan to acquire 30 percent of its energy from local renewable sources by 2020, a goal that citizens and the utility’s customers have consistently said they support. Full disclosure: I’ve spent several hours a week since January as a communications and engagement strategist for a local utility that proposes to generate 30 percent of its power with local renewable resources by 2020.

One aspect of the plan – a proposal to build a state-of-the-art combined heat and power wood biomass gasification plant – has generated some public concern. At issue are the plant’s emissions (they are much lower than a coal-fired utility), management of ash (it is non-toxic and can be used to add tilth to farm fields), and the sustainability of the fuel supply (multiple studies have shown there is plenty of wood in Michigan and the utility has committed to a sustainable forestry plan.) Other aspects of the wood biomass proposal is that the combined heat and power design doubles the plant’s efficiency, and the 10 mw size is right-scaled and locally operated in a community that is moving to local foods, regional land use and transportation plans, and generating more of what people need right here.

Pruss met for nearly two hours on April 2 in a public meeting with TCL&P’s board included and had this to say about the 30BY20 renewable energy plan and the wood biomass proposal:

On the 30BY20 Plan
Pruss: “For a long time I, as well as many others, have looked at Traverse City Light and Power as being very progressive not only in substance but in process — in engaging the community and asking the public, what are your preferences? How do you think we should chart out the energy future for this city and the region? That is absolutely commendable. And the fact that you are tryng to achieve 30 percent of your power by 2020 is commendable. At a personal level, it complements all the assets and progressive trends that this region represents.”

On Wood Biomass
Pruss: “I have a little bit of concern about biomass. They relate to sustainable supply. But this proposal by Traverse City Light and Power is cogeneration. And cogeneration is an absolutely essential trend. It’s state of the art. It’s cutting edge. And what it does is essentially double the energy efficiency of the power plant. Which is what you want to do. A biomass plant that is a combined heat and power plant is a tremendous asset. If this community were to do that, if TCL&P were to do that, it would be a precedent-setting achievement that we would commend other utilities to emulate. That is real leadership.”

Should TCL&P Delay Its Decision?
Pruss: “Not everyone can wait on the sidelines. You have to make the most prudent and economical judgments that you can. Your plant positions you well for the future. It really does. Grand Rapids. Ann Arbor. They are where you’re at and are regarded not just by other communities around the state but nationally as having the foresight to do this in a thoughtful, deliberate, and economical way. You are all to be commended.”

Michigan’s Forests and Sustainable Fuel Supply
Pruss: “Michigan has huge forest resources. We have waste wood resources. We have a lot of available biomass. We also have great capacity within our research universities, MSU and Michigan Tech in particular. They have been working to understand and calculate and model out wood availability, and also solve the logistical problems of delivery.

Here is my concern with biomass, not that we don’t have the supply and not that we can’t harvest that supply and deliver it in a sustainable way. We can. The concern is that we have a lot of potential biomass fuel projects both for combustion and biofuels, more of the former than the latter. But there are new projects that pop up. If they do advance they would be competing for the same supply. We don’t know a whole lot about price sensitivity except there is price sensitivity at some point in time.

I’m aware of 192 megawatts of projects proposed for the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. I would bet money that not all of those projects are going to proceed. They will not. The point is that other projects will pop up on the horizon and advance. What government can do and should do, and what we are doing — we’re building the capacity with our universities. We have consultants doing this. We are spending a lot of money to say this is how much biomass we have. This is our best calculation. This is how much there is. So you can plan and know how much is out there on a sustainable basis.

With respect to your plan – because it involves cogeneration which doubles the efficiency of the plant – that is hugely important. I know Governor Granholm and I would like that plant to proceed. ”

Benefits and Burdens of Clean Energy
Pruss: “With wind, with solar, with biomass there are benefits and burdens. There are no perfect solutions. I like to quote Bill McKibben, an energy expert at Middlebury College in Vermont. There are no silver bullets but there is silver buckshot.

Your plant, I’m guessing, is 70 to 80 percent efficient. That is huge. That means you’re going to be twice as energy efficient as anything out there. I think that so important. That is part of the calculus in the equation of benefits and burden. The fact that your plant is going to be so energy efficient is great. I want you to be an example for other communities around the state.”

Should Community Lay Its Bet on Biomass or Take it Slower?
Pruss: – “TCL&P and the community have been working on this for awhile. I am an observer from a distance. In preparation for this meeting I read the IRP (Integrated Resource Plan). I looked at some other materials. I looked at the proposal by the Michigan Land Use Institute. I don’t have the depth or background to pass judgment. I don’t have the benefit of the interaction this board has had with their consultants. It would be presumptuous of me to say ‘do it this way or do it that way.’

There are choices to be made. I would be disinclined to wait a year or two before you act. I think you should be aggressive. If you are really on a pathway to generate 30 percent of your energy from renewable resources it’s going to be that much easier to establish a new goal when you get there, because you are going to be that much farther ahead.”

– Keith Schneider

Mode Shift has reported the clean energy transition is being impeded by civic opposition to wind projects, solar projects, new transmission lines, and geothermal projects.  This post is the latest in the series and focuses on wood biomass. The Portland Oregonian, in an article in March, counted 18 states where wood biomass energy proposals are encountering stiff civic resistance.

One of those states is Michigan, where a plan by Traverse City Light & Power to acquire 30 percent of its power from renewable resources by 2020 has encountered resistance from a local environmental group, the region’s principal daily newspaper, and a widely-read weekly newspaper. Full disclosure, as I noted in an earlier post, I have been working several hours a week as a public engagement and communications specialist to help the utility with its 30BY20 renewable energy plan.

The big civic pushback comes principally from the utility’s proposal to replace some of its baseload energy, currently generated from coal, with a 10-megawatt wood biomass gasification plant that has combined heat and power capacity. The utility’s technical reports and specialists make a strong case that the proposed combined heat and power plant would generate far less emissions than a coal-fired plant, and comparable to a natural gas plant. It also would keep $4 million in the region that is now being sent to Wyoming, to railroads, and to downstate coal-generating utilities. And the wood-powered plant would be a step toward energy security and to reduce the need for coal.

Last week the state’s Director of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth, Skip Pruss, visited Traverse City and expressed support for the new plant, and the Michigan Land Use Institute (which I founded and where I worked for 12 years until 2007) proposed an alternative clean energy plan that included room for a small wood biomass plant, like that proposed by the utility. But the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, which this month celebrates its 30th anniversary, has led the charge against the biomass idea, asserting without a strong fact base  that the plant will produce excess pollution (it won’t), toxic ash (it isn’t), and harm to the forests (not true).

What’s so disconcerting is that the effort to dissuade the utility’s board from approving the biomass proposal produces a net negative consequence for the environment. It means burning coal to produce power in northern Michigan. It means more greenhouse gases, more mercury in the state’s lakes and its fish, more heavy metals, more coal ash piles that leak, more strip mined coal. In a perfect world we’d be able to generate all our power with wind or sun or some other emissions-free resource. Nuclear?

It’s not a perfect world and wood biomass is not a perfect source of energy for generating baseload power. It’s just so much better than coal.

Those arguments don’t produce anything but derision among the ardent opponents of biomass who are trying to halt projects all over the country, including in these states:

In Massachusetts,  five wood biomass plants are proposed, and critics are going after them with vigor.  Russell Biomass proposes a 50 MW plant along the Westfield River in the south-central part of the state, and Pioneer Renewable Energy is proposing a 47 MW plant just east of Greenfield, Mass., near the Vermont border. Concerned Citizens of Russell have raised siting, pollution, and water withdrawals from the Westfield River as primary reasons to oppose the plant. Last year 450 people packed a zoning board hearing in Greenfield, where citizens described their fears about pollution, trucking, and forest sustainability.

Massachusetts is one of the 29 states that has approved a renewable portfolio standard to encourage utilities to develop a portion of their energy from cleaner sources. Massachusetts requires utilities to develop 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The Massachusetts Forest Bioenergy Initiative, a project of the state Department of Energy Resources, has found that wood biomass is a reasonable source of renewable energy in a state has “3 million acres of underutilized forestland and other large sources of wood.” The Bioenergy Initiative also found “that as much as 4 million tons of woody biomass could be produced annually in Massachusetts, mostly from forests and forest products industries. Utilizing only half that volume for the production of electricity would represent an estimated 150 MW of renewable generation, and substantial rural economic development associated with the fuel supply.”

Enough citizens in western Massachusetts — site of thick forests and the biomass proposals — expressed  such aggressive skepticism about the new plants that late last year that the state commissioned a study from the respected Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences to “appropriately direct and regulate the development of biomass energy for Massachusetts.”

Until the study is completed in May, and then opened for public comment and review, Massachusetts has put a moratorium on new wood biomass plant development. In addition, critics of the technology are pushing to 1) enact a new law that would limit air emissions to levels so low that wood biomass would cease to be an option, or 2) put a wood biomass ban in place through a November ballot initiative.

“The myth is cracking wide open right now as citizens and public health advocates and well-informed environmental organizations are becoming educated about the simple truth of biomass,” said Margot Sheehan, a lawyer with EcoLaw, an environmental organization that has become influential on the issue in Massachusett and other states. “These are incinerators in disguise.”

Scores of environmentalists, scientists, and energy specialists dispute that view, asserting that wood biomass can generate lower emissions and produce clean energy sustainably at less cost than coal and natural gas. “The benefits and impacts of all our energy sources deserve serious examination, and biomass is no exception,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “When managed sustainably, biomass can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and cut global warming pollution as it protects water and soil quality, wildlife habitat and biodiversity.”

My friend Bill McKibben, the author and founder of 350.org, told me the other day in an email message that the big issue with wood biomass is scale. Perhaps the big biomass plants proposed in Massachusetts warrant the big citizen pushback. But the small 10 mw plant that McKibben supported and which is operating at Middlebury College, where he is a scholar in residence, makes more sense because its emissions are low and the college is working on a sustainble fuel supply plan, involving planting willows on marginal farm land. “I think biomass is the classic example of scale issues,” McKibben wrote. “The Middlebury plant is a good one.”

The value of the Middlebury plant, and the others built in recent years, is that wood biomass replaces coal, what McKibben calls “the dirtiest fuel on Earth.” The reality of all of the civic campaigns against wood biomass is that in every case a “win” for opponents of biomass is a big loss for everybody else. Why? Because generating electricity from coal produces demonstrably higher risks to the environment and public health.

“Massachusetts is confronting the unfortunate reality that, no matter how hard we try, distributed renewable energy inevitably has some significant impact on our own backyards,” writes Chet Geschickter, a principal at Biomass Advisors, a consultancy. “It is easy to speak in platitudes about green jobs, innovation and green technology as a virtuous path forward to combat global warming head-on.  It is much harder for a state like Massachusetts to ponder, let alone undertake, any initiative to move from a near complete (as in 99 percent) importer of energy in all forms, to an energy producer, let alone an exporter of so much as a drop of fuel or volt of electricity.”

Wisconsin, like the other states considering wood biomass as an option, approved a renewable portfolio standard, which in Wisconsin’s case requires utility’s to generate 10 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2015. We Energies, in a bid to meet that requirement, has proposed a $255 million, 50-mw wood biomass-fired power plant to be built near Rothschild. But late in March, after the proposal was formally submitted to the state, 150 citizens turned out in Rothschild in late March to express fears about truck traffic, particulates, emissions, and forest sustainability.

Wisconsin is pressing forward. The state Public Service Commission in November approved Excel Energy`s application to install biomass gasification technology at its Bay FrontPower Plant in Ashland, Wis. The $58.1 million project converts the plant`s remaining coal-fired unit to biomass gasification technology, allowing it to use 100 percent biomass in all three boilers and making it the largest biomass plant in the Midwest. Currently, two of the three operating units at Bay Front use biomass as their primary fuel to generate electricity. Purchases of wood residues and related services will generate $20 million annually in economic development in the six-county region around Ashland, where the plant is located, said Excel.

In Georgia, residents in North DeKalb are protesting a proposal by Southeast Renewable Energy to build a $23 million wood biomass gasification plant in a light industrial area near n I-85. The community council and county planning commission, mindful of the opposition, have turned down a rezoning application for the site. Nimby issues are the principal cause of the citizen response.

Meanwhile in South Carolina, Energy Secretary Steven Chu attended a groundbreaking ceremony last November at DOE’s Savannah River Site, near Aiken, where a $795 million biomass plant is under construction to replace a coal-fired plant.

In Oregon, Seneca Sustainable Energy plans to open a power plant by year’s end that will convert about 700 tons a day of logging leftovers and waste from its nearby sawmill into enough electricity to power 13,000 homes. The plant, according to an article in the Portland Oregonian, “features West Coast-leading pollution controls endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s projected to release far less pollution than the usual practice of burning slash piles in the woods.” Oregon’s governor, and U.S. Senator favor the plant. But opposition includes Lisa Arkin, executive director of the Oregon Toxics Alliance in Eugene, who unsuccessfully pushed for tighter pollution controls.

She and other activists, reported the Oregonian, favor more energy conservation, subsidies for non-polluting renewable power and selective logging that can reduce logging waste and the need for open burning.

In Florida, a $250 million 50-mw wood biomass plant proposed by ADAGE for Gretna was blocked this year by citizen concerns

– Keith Schneider

The Obama administration threw heaters this week to influence climate and energy policy and practices. The first announcement — to end a long-standing moratorium on offshore oil drilling — was seen as a wild pitch.

The president said the Interior Department would open large swaths of the Atlantic, Gulf, and Alaskan coasts to oil and natural gas development. The drilling zone on the East Coast extends from Delaware to the central coast of Florida. The Arctic Ocean north of Alaska will also be opened. Many Republicans and environmentalists expressed their dismay.

Then, the EPA and the Department of Transportation teamed up to set new tailpipe emissions and fuel mileage standards to limit greenhouse gases and increase fuel economy for new vehicles. The limits on greenhouse gases, the first ever set by the government,  are expected to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by about 30 percent between 2012 and 2016, and increase fuel efficiency to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon.

After Drilling and Driving Comes Mining
After that, the EPA proposed new water-quality standards for surface coal mining in Appalachia that Administrator Lisa Jackson said were intended to block the extravagantly wasteful mountaintop removal. The water regulations, which attempt to set the first numeric standards for salt in streams near surface coal mines, are meant to protect 95 percent of the region’s aquatic life and freshwater streams.

The proposed regulations were another clear action by the White House to limit the environmental consequences of a fossil fuel mining trend that has even outraged growing numbers of retired Appalachian coal miners.  “We expect this guideline to change behaviors, to change actions,” said Jackson. “Because if we keep doing what we have been doing, we’ll continue to see degradation of water quality.”

Green activists applauded the mining and tailpipe actions. But the White House proposal for offshore drilling prompted consistent rebuke from climate activists and Republican lawmakers, and a few questions. Jeremy Symons, the senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, correctly pointed out that “we cannot drill our way to energy independence. The bottom line is there simply is not enough oil available off of our coasts to satisfy America’s fossil fuel addiction.”

Other observers noted that the government has sought in recent years to lease offshore regions for oil and gas development in other areas and attracted scant interest from the oil industry. Why? One reason is that drilling in deep water is exorbitantly expensive. An offshore rig can cost $200 million to $1 billion, and sinking a single well can cost $100 million or more.

An Offshore Diversion?
President Obama anticipated the puzzlement, asserting the offshore plan was a bid for energy pragmatism. “We are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy,” he said on Wednesday. Left out of the conversation, though, was a huge source of available petroleum that neither the White House, the Republicans, nor the oil industry wants to talk about.

That’s the Athabasca oil sands of northern Alberta, Canada. Petroleum engineers say there is enough oil embedded in the sands to fuel America for 300 years, based on current rates of consumption. The Obama administration has cleared the way for a new pipeline from Alberta to the Midwest. Hyperion Resources wants to build a $10 billion refinery amid the sunflower and wheat fields of South Dakota. The dust up over drilling on the Continental Shelf may well be a distraction, diverting attention from a much more substantive source of energy, oil industry wealth, and climate changing emissions.

– Keith Schneider

Just in time for April Fool’s Day, the National Wildlife Federation today released its analysis of shifting habitats of ticks and other migrating critters with a tongue in cheek title, “They Came from Climate Change.”

“The horrifying hordes of Climate Invaders are upon us–creeping up from lower elevations, attacking from foreign countries, and settling into areas where once they were unable to survive,” notes the marketing copy. The current vibe is irony and humor. The presentation does a nice job of capturing that spirit, and the text contains a lot of good facts about the problem.

Other good reads of note:

VERIFYING EMISSIONS- The National Research Council’s “Verifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions” discusses the persistence of greenhouse gases  in the atmosphere. The report concludes that each country could estimate fossil fuel CO2 emissions accurately enough to support a climate treaty’s monitoring requirements.

OIL VULNERABILITY- During unpredictable economic periods, America’s addiction to oil leaves us vulnerable. NRDC’s updated analysis identifies the states that were most whipsawed by o oil prices in 2009. It also explores a hypothetical scenario: What would happen if another price spike like the one in 2008 happened now, in the midst of a recession? The purpose of presenting this scenario is not to predict its likelihood of occurring, but rather to highlight the fact that oil price spikes happen. The data suggests that oil vulnerability affects all states, but that drivers in some states are hit harder y than others.

URBAN EMISSIONS- WWF released “Reinventing the City: Three Prerequisites for Greening Urban Infrastructures,” a report on urban CO2 emissions reduction strategies. With close to 80% of CO2 emissions generated in urban populations, how we develop and manage our urban infrastructures during the next three decades could determine whether cities become a force for environmental destruction or a primary source of ecological rejuvenation. The report identifies the necessity for cities to adopt aggressive energy reduction goals and the utilization of the latest technological advances to support and enable a green transition.

DIRTY KILOWATTS – The power plants that provide electricity to run our homes, businesses, and factories are also the single largest source of mercury air pollution in the United States, responsible for more than 40 percent mercury emissions nationwide. The Environmental Integrity Project has ranked the top fifty power plant polluters for mercury. Pollution controls that dramatically reduce mercury emissions are widely available, and are already being used at many power plants. But, until the public and policymakers hold the electric power industry to its promises to shut down or clean up the nation’s oldest and dirtiest plants, Americans will continue to bear unnecessary health and environmental costs.

WINNERS AND LOSERS- “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?” The new report from PEW documents the dawning of the new worldwide industry of clean energy. Accounting for more than 90 percent of worldwide finance and investment, G-20 countries dominate the clean energy landscape. The Unites States is on the verge of losing its leadership position in installed renewable energy capacity, with China surging in the last several years to a virtual tie.

The U.S. policy framework for reducing global warming pollution and promoting renewable energy remains uncertain, with comprehensive legislation slowly working its way through Congress. On the other hand, America’s entrepreneurial traditions and strengths in innovation—especially its leadership in venture capital investing—are considerable, giving it the potential to recoup leadership and market share in the future.
– Keith Schneider