Although the administration’s finalized Clean Power Plan was released in early August, EPA is still actively grappling with the rules regarding biomass feedstocks as a compliance option under the Plan. Biomass (or biogenic) feedstocks include wastes such as organic wastes, lumber, pulp and paper industry wastes, agricultural residues and purpose-grown feedstocks. Solid biomass can be co-fired with coal in existing plants or used in renewable heating applications.
The biomass industry argues that the utilization of biomass as an electricity source is an attractive option for states as it has the potential to sequester carbon as additional feedstocks are grown, it provides incentives to landowners to maintain working agricultural and forested lands and it allows regions to capture value from materials that are usually disposed of as waste. If not utilized, such wastes can become a source of greenhouse gases. Already, a number of states allow for utilization in their state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). Support from both the House and Senate for federal recognition of biomass as a renewable source of electricity is also strong.
Despite the attractiveness to industry and some states, many in the environmental community have expressed concern that EPA’s inclusion of biomass in the Plan, particularly woody varieties, will lead to numerous negative environmental consequences, including increased carbon emissions, increased deforestation, and ecosystem destruction.
To ensure that biomass feedstocks are utilized in a manner that reduces overall carbon emissions, EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation has tasked its Science Advisory Board (SAB) with untangling the complex issues surrounding carbon accounting for feedstocks. Carbon accounting is a calculation of the net carbon emitted or sequestered by the growth and utilization of any given biomass feedstock over a particular time scale. On September 9, the EPA’s Scientific Advisory met on the issue, indicating that the agency is finalizing its Framework for Assessing Biogenic CO2 Emissions from Stationary Sources.
Biomass is not a utility-scale proposition, certainly in the United States. There is not adequate infrastructure to feed a 200 MW biomass facility, so, in that respect, the dedicated environmentalists… Read more »
Hi Bill — While the Scientific Advisory Board has not finalized their Framework, I do believe they are considering how to include Municipal Solid Waste in the Plan, which would be great.
Biomass should be recognized as a valuable carbon reduction tool within the Clean Power Plan because it can be renewed and it can displace non-renewable fossil carbon. More importantly, biofuels… Read more »
I don’t think that States are likely to consider biomass as a viable compliance option under the Clean Power Plan. While biomass energy should not be ignored, especially in rural… Read more »
Thank you all for your comments thus far. The Clean Power Plan is largely a utility-scale emissions reduction scheme. However, there is room “beyond the building blocks” for distributed scale… Read more »
All of the survivable IPCC scenarios require significant negative emissions this century. Biomass energy production can play a role in negative emissions through ether pyrolysis (biochar) or power generation with… Read more »
The potential role of biomass in the CPP has been enhanced in the most recent version of EPA Biogenic Carbon Accounting Framework. The carbon mitigation benefits of biomass are only… Read more »
It is not likely that we’ll see large-scale utilization of biomass for utility-scale power production in the U.S., for many of the reasons that others have cited here (e.g., limitations… Read more »
Environmentalists are beginning to realize that deriving energy from the biosphere is the problem, not the answer, especially at the scale necessary to support modern energy-intensive civilizations. Humans have destroyed… Read more »