The Obama administration put off for another three years a decision on whether to regulate planet-warming gases from biomass power. The surprise delay dealt a blow to green groups' hopes for pollution controls on wood-burning incinerators anytime soon, while industry breathed sighs of relief.
"It was a total shock," said Margaret Sheehan, a lawyer with the Cambridge, Mass.-based Biomass Accountability Project, who said that she believes Big Timber was behind the U.S. EPA's decision.
Dan Whiting, spokesperson for the National Alliance for Forest Owners (NAFO), an organization of private forest owners in 47 states, said he was "pleasantly surprised."
Still, the delay leaves wide open a question central to the industry's future: Should turning tree parts into electricity qualify as clean renewable power in the eyes of government regulators, or should biomass emissions be regarded as a source of greenhouse gas pollution?
The verdict on that, however it is decided, will have major implications for developers of the $1 billion industry and U.S. states striving to meet clean energy targets.
Biomass includes plant waste, wood chips, organic debris and whole trees, and industry representatives say burning it is "carbon neutral." They argue that new growth absorbs CO2 and cancels out emissions spewed into the atmosphere from burning the wood.
"Biomass greenhouse gas emissions … are part of the natural carbon cycle, and they don't increase carbon in the atmosphere," Whiting told SolveClimate News.
Conservationists dispute that claim with a very different understanding of what constitutes the natural carbon cycle. Rotting biomass enriches soils, which capture and sequester some of the carbon of the once-living plant tissue.
They argue that biomass combustion produces more CO2 than burning fossil fuels — by how much varies depending on the type of materials and how they are transported. Harvesting whole trees is seen as the worst for climate change. But Sheehan said that using logging leftovers is not much better.
"It's not really waste. It's part of a natural carbon cycle. If we vacuum up the forest floor to burn all the twigs and leftover debris, then they will continue to deplete our soil," she told SolveClimate News.
EPA said it would bring the best science to bear on the issues over the next three years. By July 2014, it will decide how to treat biomass under its "tailoring" rule, which determines which polluters are required to account for their emissions under the Clean Air Act.
EPA began formally regulating heat-trapping gases from power plants and refineries on January 2 under the rule.
in May 2010, EPA proposed that emissions from biomass combustion be regarded as greenhouse gas emissions, but in July, the agency released a "call for information" on the issue and received more than 7,000 comments. The following month, NAFO sent a petition urging the agency to exclude biomass facilities from regulation altogether, which led to this week's decision.
Industry to Feel 'Significant Regulatory Chill?'
