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Biomass Incineration
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Biomass Electricity: Clean Energy Subsidies for a Dirty Industry (July 2011)
Study: Southeast Biomass has Carbon Spike Before Long-Term Climate Benefits (Feb 2012)
Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error (Searchinger, et. al., Science Magazine, Oct 2009) (full article)
Letter from 90 Scientists to Congressional Leaders urging that biomass global warming emissions be accounted for properly (May 17, 2010)
Biomass Sustainability and Carbon Policy Study
(June 2010 report by Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts)
Full Report [5MB]
Study found that, after 40 years, the net GHG emissions from biomass burned for electricity are still worse than coal, even when considering forest regrowth, and that biomass emissions are worse than natural gas even after 90 years. It also found that biomass, burned in small scale heating applications or in combined heat and power (CHP) industrial applications is worse than natural gas, but better than burning oil.
Review of the Manomet Biomass Sustainability and Carbon Policy Study by Dr. Mary Booth
July 2010 report showing how the Manomet study understates GHG emissions from biomass.
Wood Based Bioenergy: The Green Lie The impact of wood-based bioenergy on forests and forest dependent people (May, 2010). Prepared by the Global Forest Coalition.
Clearcut Disaster: Carbon Loophole Threatens U.S. Forests (June 2010 report by Environmental Working Group) (full report)
Massachusetts Forest Watch comments on how the Manomet study understates biomass impacts (July 2010)
Massachusetts to Impose New Regulations on Biomass Incinerators in Response to Manomet Study (July 2010 Letter from Ian Bowles, Secretary of Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources)
Because biomass has a lower heating value than fossil fuels, burning biomass emits more carbon dioxide than coal or natural gas per unit of energy produced. Biomass has also been found to emit more nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) than coal and natural gas. See this comparison of facilities in Massachusetts: Biomass and C&D are dirtier than coal
Second Opinion: The Medical Profession Diagnoses Biomass Incineration (Sept 2011)
Biomass Incineration has "Unacceptable Health Risks" and Drives Up Health Care Costs (Compilation of Anti-Biomass Statements from Medical and Health Associations)
Statement from American Lung Association in Florida (April 2011) opposing biomass burners and noting weaker pollution standards in rural areas and the increased vulnerability of Florida's older population.
American Lung Association hails EPA report on "The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020" (March 2011)
Letter from the American Lung Association in Georgia (Dec 2010) detailing harms of particulate matter and other pollution from biomass burners.
Washington State Medical Association (Dec 2010)
"...urge state and local government to adopt policies to minimize the public health impacts of new and existing sources of air pollution."
Mason County General Hospital active medical staff letter to Mason Thurston Medical Society in Washington (Aug 2010)
"We are in opposition to the currently proposed biomass power plants based on the grounds that these facilities pose unacceptable health risks."
American Heart Association - Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease (May 2010)
"Exposure to PM <2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) over a few hours to weeks can trigger cardiovascular disease–related mortality and nonfatal events; longer-term exposure (eg, a few years) increases the risk for cardiovascular mortality to an even greater extent than exposures over a few days and reduces life expectancy within more highly exposed segments of the population by several months to a few years; reductions in PM levels are associated with decreases in cardiovascular mortality within a time frame as short as a few years; and many credible pathological mechanisms have been elucidated that lend biological plausibility to these findings. [...] ...overall evidence is consistent with a causal relationship between PM2.5 exposure and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. [...] PM2.5 exposure is deemed a modifiable factor that contributes to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality."
American Academy of Family Physicians (April 2010) letter expressing concern about poultry litter incinerators in North Carolina.
North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians (April 2010) letter expressing concern about proposed poultry litter incinerators.
Physicians for Social Responsibility / Pioneer Valley (MA) (Feb 2010)
"the biomass power plants being proposed for several Pioneer Valley locations would contribute to particulate air pollution emissions in a region that already has pollution problems, and therefore we oppose the construction and operation of such plants"
Massachusetts Medical Society (Feb 2010)
"Massachusetts Medical Society believes that biomass combustion electricity generation plants pose an unacceptable public health risk..."
Florida Medical Association (Dec 2009)
"the Florida Medical Association urges state government to adopt policies to minimize the approval and construction of new incinerators including mass-burn, gasification, plasma, pyrolysis, biomass, refuse-derived fuel and other incinerator technologies, and to develop a plan to retire existing outdated incinerators"
American Lung Association of New England - Biomass Position Statement (Dec 2009)
American Lung Association (MA) (Nov 2009)
Letter opposing renewable energy credits or any other preferential treatment for biomass in energy or climate legislation.
Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition (Nov 2009)
Testimony in Opposition to the Building of a Construction and Demolition Wood Waste Incinerator in Springfield, MA
Letter about Medical Opposition to Biomass in Climate Legislation (Oct 2009)
American Lung Association (June 2009)
"The Lung Association urges that the [climate] legislation not promote the combustion of biomass."
Capital Medical Society (September 2008) expressing concern over particulate matter from Biomass Gas & Electric proposal.
Erie County (PA) Medical Society (July 2008) Statement on Proposed Tire Incinerator
Biomass incineration is devastating to forest ecosystems. While trees may technically be "renewable" in the sense that they regrow, forest ecosystems are not renewable in a short time frame. For more information on the threats of biomass to forests, see:
- Greenpeace Report: Fueling a BioMess (Nov 2011)
- Save America's Forests
- Biomess: Massachusetts Forests and Environment Threatened by Forest Biomass Incinerators
- Biomass Effects on Forest Cutting, and the Myth of Carbon Neutrality
- Buckeye Forest Council
Letter to Senator Stabenow Showing how few Jobs are Created by Biomass Incinerators
Biomass Burning is Bad for the Economy and a Poor Job Creation Vehicle
NAACP letter to Florida Governor and DEP pushing for review of potential discriminatory effects of proposed biomass gasifier in Port Saint Joe, Florida. (2011)
Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP letter to Congress and President Obama opposing a proposed Sterling Plant biomass incinerator. (2010)
Dr. Edward Holifield's testimony to Commissioners of Gadsden County, Florida regarding black infant mortality statistics in Gadsden County of 15.6 per 1,000 live births, and Kenneth Chay's study linking air pollution to infant mortality. (video)
New: Nov 2011 letter to Congressional "Super Committee" (Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) asking that biomass subsidies be cut
Sign onto the Energy Justice (anti-biomass) Platform!
Biomass incinerator planned for your community?
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Biomass Basics
Bioenergy is an umbrella term for "biomass" (incinerating for electricity production) and "biofuels" (converting to liquids for burning as transportation or heating fuels). The biomass term has meant burning of: municipal solid waste (trash), tires1, construction/demolition wood waste, crop and animal wastes, energy crops, trees, gas from digestion of sewage sludge or animal wastes, and landfill gas.2 Biomass can include any non-fossil fuel that is arguably "organic."
"Green" biomass (like energy crops) is often a foot in the door for more toxic waste streams. Plants that start off burning "clean wood chips" can easily turn to burning more contaminated fuels (which may be cheaper or even free), or get paid to take really dirty wastes like trash or tires. Economic pressures encourage use of these dirtier fuels.3
"Alternative" vs. "Renewable" vs. "Clean & Green"
All of the above terms are often used interchangeably, but can mean different things. Just the term "renewable" can mean different things in various state or federal energy bills, laws and programs. Non-profit groups and private energy certification programs all have their own definitions as well. While these terms generally mean "not fossil fuels and not nuclear," even coal technologies have been included in state and federal "alternative" and "renewable" energy policies.4 Almost universally, many sorts of incineration schemes have been included in the various renewable energy laws, usually in the guide of "biomass" and landfill gas. "Clean" and "green" are rarely, if ever, defined and are terms of general environmental benefit with no generally accepted meaning.5
Renewability does not usually mean clean or green. It's only used to describe whether an energy source is replenishable and replenished on some reasonably short time scale.6 Renewables aren't necessarily cleaner than other fuels. Since biomass incinerators are considered renewable, they are given an advantage over cleaner (but still quite polluting) fossil fuels like natural gas.7 Since all of these words have been abused to include polluting smokestack industries, no combination of these words can be counted on to convey only zero-emission technologies like wind and solar.
Renewable energy policies support incineration. There are five main advantages available to technologies that are labeled "renewable": tax credits, subsidies, research grants, renewable portfolio standards, and green pricing programs.
Biomass competes with wind, solar, hydroelectric and geothermal for the renewables market. Wind is becoming one of the cheapest energy sources altogether and is about 10 times cheaper than solar. Biomass (especially landfill gas) is the cheapest except for where there are good wind sites. We are likely to see many more biomass burners because they can be built in many more places than good wind sites can be found. Since there is already a market for incinerators (based on the economics of the waste industry), biomass competes most directly with wind, the cleanest and most promising power source. Eliminating biomass from renewables definitions means wind would get better funding.
Biomass = Combustion = Pollution
All biomass combustion technologies put pollution in the air in order to make "green energy." Even with the best air pollution controls, a single plant can still release millions of pounds of regulated pollutants each year.8 Environmental regulations are surprisingly weak and air pollution permits fail to require that any toxic emissions be monitored on a continuous basis.9 Air pollution controls only effectively transfer toxins from the air to the ash, which will eventually pollute soil and water where it is dumped. Most of the biomass wastes/fuels contain chlorine, creating dioxins10 (the most toxic chemicals known to science) when burned.
Anything that creates pollution in the course of producing electricity shouldn't be considered clean, green or renewable. Wind and solar, even though they have some environmental impacts in their construction don't have to keep polluting in order to make electricity. Even though environmentalists tend to think of "biomass" as grass and trees, the vast majority of what is actually proposed by industry (and of what is already benefiting from pro-biomass renewable policies) is trash incineration, construction & demolition wood waste incineration and landfill gas burning.
Waste Incineration
Waste incineration is the worst category of biomass. Providing increased waste disposal capacity worsens the waste problem by lowering the costs associated with waste generation. It also destroys resources (some of which are best recycled or composted), and turns them into toxic ash and toxic air emissions. Wastes that cannot be reused, recycled or composted cleanly ought to be stabilized through digestion, then landfilled rather than incinerated.
What makes waste dangerous is not its volume, but its toxicity. People don't usually die from waste falling on them, but exposure to toxic constituents of wastes can cause all sorts of health and environmental problems. When wastes are incinerated, their toxic constituents are liberated into breathable air emissions and the toxic ash contaminates groundwater. The ash that is left then has a higher surface area and is more dangerous in a landfill, where rainwater will leach out the toxins more readily than if the waste is left unburned. Incinerator ash has been promoted for such applications as ingredients in cement, fill for reclaiming mines, fertilizer, biochar11 (charcoal), industrial tile and road base. These are more dangerous than landfilling, bringing contamination closer to where they can harm people.
Incineration has become a dirty word since activists have stopped hundreds of incinerators since the 1980s. Newer types (gasification, plasma arc and pyrolysis) claim not to be incinerators, but share the same fundamental problems.12
The Fuels
Trash incineration comprises 28% of existing "biopower" capacity in the U.S. In the extended Mid-Atlantic area (Virginia to New York), trash incineration makes up 66% of such capacity.13 Waste and energy corporations have a lot to lose if trash incineration is not considered renewable. [Read more on Trash Incineration]
Tires contain many toxic constituents, which make burning them hazardous. Halogens in tires cause hazardous emissions when burned such as dioxins, furans, PCBs, and chlorobenzenes. Toxic metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and chromium are also released when burning tires.14 Many other hazardous air pollutants are released from burning tires with studies having shown tire burning to be dirtier than coal.15 While not widely promoted as biomass, tire burning has been considered in some federal biomass research programs16 and corporations have promoted tire incinerators as renewable energy facilities – seeking to benefit from state renewable energy mandates.17 [Read more on Tire Incineration]
Wood waste is a very broad category. It includes - but is not limited to - wood pallets, construction / demolition wood waste, land clearing and right-of-way tree trimmings, Christmas trees, tree and shrub trimmings, paper and lumber mill waste, and wood products industry wastes. It can even include trees that have been used to suck up toxic chemicals from contaminated soil in "phytoremediation" projects.18 Wood waste can come contaminated with wood preservatives, binders, paints, glues, chlorine bleach, plastic laminating materials, chlorinated adhesives, or phenol and urea formaldehyde resins, nails/staples, or other non-wood materials. Treated woods are usually coated with creosote, pentachlorophenol, or copper chromium arsenate (CCA).19 It is difficult to sort out treated wood (which can be up to 50% of wood waste) - even trained workers miss 30% of it.20 Burning CCA-treated wood will release cancer-causing arsenic and chromium VI. Although arsenic is no longer used in new wood treatment,21 this will be a problem for decades to come. Most CCA wood is still in use and its presence in the waste stream is increasing.22 Since copper is a catalyst in dioxin formation,23 a small bit of CCA wood will greatly increase dioxin emissions from wood burners.
Some wood burners that are permitted to be taking "clean" wood wastes have been allowed to accept a certain percentage of chlorinated wastes, since some wood waste suppliers are unable to completely isolate all vinyl-coated material.24 In construction/demolition wastes, there is likelihood of PVC (polyvinylchloride25) contamination from many sources common in building materials.26 Wood burners also emit formaldehyde, acrolein, phenols, benzene, napthalene (present in creosote), and PAHs, not to mention NOx, SOx, VOCs, and particulate matter. Wood storage piles present fire risks, and outdoor piles risk wetness from rain, which leads to higher emissions when burned.
Waste wood that is truly clean ought to be reused or made into paper, but not burned. Industrial wood burners, even if they start off burning a relatively "clean" supply of wood wastes, often end up seeking to burn more hazardous types of waste. In some cases, wood waste facilities have sought to burn wood tar waste.27 In other cases, state agencies have allowed industrial wood burners to dispose of their oily water by spraying it on their wood fuel.28 Some states actively encourage industrial wood burners to burn waste tires.2,30 It has been argued by some corporations that they need to co-fire tires in order to become "leaner and meaner" in the deregulated electric market.31 Many industrial wood burners are already permitted to burn tires, plastics, treated wood waste, black liquor solids (toxic, chlorinated paper mill wastes) and/or other paper mill sludges.
Agriculture wastes include, but are not limited to, orchard tree crops, vineyard, grain, legumes, sugar, and other crop byproducts or residues as well as nuts, shells, hulls, and other food processing wastes. Crop wastes should be tilled back into the soil to promote soil health, tilth, fertility, and nurturing of the organisms remaining within the soil. Where this is impractical, crop residues ought to be composted or recycled into paper products, not destroyed in incinerators.
While animal factory wastes could include corporate hog factory wastes, dairy factory wastes, beef feedlot wastes, and more, these are usually too wet to be burned (though are used in digesters to provide "biomass" power).32 However, poultry litter (chicken and turkey manure and the wood chip bedding it falls on) is dry enough to be incinerated for electricity production. Britain's Fibrowatt has proposed many throughout the U.S. and Europe.33 They have successfully lobbied state and federal politicians to get poultry waste incineration included in renewable energy laws.34 Due to weaker pollution control requirements on biomass incinerators, new poultry waste incinerators are more polluting than new coal plants for some of the major criteria air pollutants.35 Community groups in several U.S. states and in other countries have organized to stop poultry waste incinerators, sometimes joined by farmer advocacy groups, since farmers see poultry litter as valuable fertilizer. [Read more on Poultry Waste Incineration]
Energy crops are typically fast growing trees (like poplar or willow) or grasses like switchgrass. These are prime targets for genetic engineering. Biotech grass seed has been found to contaminate native grass as far as 13 miles away.36 Switchgrass has been found to have 7 times as much chlorine as coal in an Iowa study.37 Chlorine in wheat straw has been found to have so much chlorine as to be corrosive to boilers.38 There are no organic requirements for these crops. Toxic herbicides and wastes used as fertilizers have introduced contaminants to switchgrass crops,39 that can be taken up by the crops. In phytoremediation schemes, plants suck up toxins from contaminated sites.40 Contaminants are released when these trees and grasses are later burned.
Gas-based biomass includes digester gas and landfill gas. Digesters essentially compost waste in a vessel, producing a gas that is mostly methane. This can make sense for sewage sludge and animal wastes, but renewable energy policies shouldn't subsidize waste management for animal factories.41 Landfill gas burning for energy is toxic and actually worse for global warming than not burning for energy. [Read more on Digesters or Landfill Gas]42
Sustainable Ag and Zero Waste Solutions
Sustainable agriculture is an energy and climate solution, but not by growing and burning things. Biomass incineration is not a waste or energy solution, though, as it is the most polluting and energy-wasting way to manage materials.43 "Zero waste" strategies (including reduce, reuse, recycle...) can nearly eliminate the need for landfills and incinerators, benefiting the climate and saving energy and materials.44
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