The Climate Report - Winter 2011
Although U.S. EPA recently issued guidance for regulators
drafting Clean Air Act permits for greenhouse gas emitters, one
issue that remains unclear is the status of
biomass and
biogenic emissions. EPA has announced that it plans to issue
guidance in January 2011 on the environmental, energy, and economic
benefits that may be attributed to the use of biomass, with further
guidance to come in May 2011 on whether carbon dioxide emissions
that result from the combustion of biomass must be controlled at
new and modified stationary sources.
Biomass is biological material, most commonly plant matter such as
wood chips, switchgrass, or corn, that is utilized to generate
electricity or produce heat as a renewable energy source. EPA has
stated that it does not have sufficient information to determine
whether biomass emissions are carbon-neutral, and thus could be
excluded from consideration in applying greenhouse gas permitting
requirements. It solicited additional public comments, resulting in
more than 7,000 submissions on this issue.
Proponents of biomass argue that such emissions should not be
considered in applying the regulatory threshold, because burning
plants simply returns to the atmosphere carbon dioxide that the
plants removed as they grew, in contrast to burning fossil fuels,
which results in emission of carbon that had been sequestered below
ground for millennia. Opponents argue that the biomass cycle is not
entirely carbon-neutral and does not adequately account for the
effects of land-use changes.
EPA's guidance in the first part of 2011 should clarify two
issues: (1) whether a stationary source's emissions from
biomass combustion must be included in calculations to determine
whether that source exceeds applicable permitting thresholds, and
(2) whether "fuel-switching" from fossil fuels to biomass
may be selected as the "best available control
technology" in greenhouse gas emissions permits.
In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is moving
forward with plans to provide financial assistance under the
Biomass Crop Assistance Program to farmers who grow commercial
biomass crops, such as switchgrass, sorghum, hybrid poplars, and
willows. Under the
final rule, published October 27, 2010, 50 million acres of
existing pasture land and traditional cropland would be converted
to biomass energy production. The USDA believes that this broad
program is necessary to meet the federal renewable fuel standard,
which requires production of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel,
including fuel from biomass, by 2022.
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