Editor’s note: “Facing climate change” is series about the impact of global warming on Vermont’s people and environment.
Vermont’s reputation as a green state was upheld this year when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an interactive map of the biggest point sources of greenhouse gases in the country. In spite of, or thanks to, these facilities, Vermont has the lowest emissions in the nation.
Even so, Vermont’s six biggest polluters are not moving fast enough to meet the state’s goal of reducing emissions 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The EPA map shows facilities, mostly industrial, that release more than 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Vermont’s biggest polluters total 849,068 metric tons of greenhouse gases, about 10 percent of Vermont’s total emissions.
In order of decreasing emissions, the facilities are the J.C. McNeil biomass generating plant, IBM, Moretown Landfill, Coventry Landfill, RockTenn paperboard recycling company, and the University of Vermont. These six facilities have already taken measures to lower their emissions, and some have plans to do even more.
Federal and state regulation of greenhouse gases
Facilities that release more than 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases are required to report their emissions to the EPA. This accounts for nearly all power plants and refineries, as well as other large industrial facilities. The latest data are from 2011 and are not yet completely verified by the EPA. The gases reported to the EPA are converted into a single number called carbon dioxide equivalent, a measure of the warming effect of each gas expressed in units of carbon dioxide.
Doug Elliott, the section chief of the air pollution control division at the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, said Vermont doesn’t do much to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA delegates Vermont to monitor and enforce emissions levels of any big polluter. Elliott said a facility has to release 100,000 metric tons of CO2e before the state and federal governments start looking over its shoulder, a threshold Elliott called “very high.”
Currently, keeping an eye on the big polluters isn’t taking up much of the air pollution control division’s resources because there are so few facilities in Vermont that exceed the federal limits. But, said Elliott, “There is talk of reducing that threshold and depending on where they reduce that threshold to it could bring in an absurd number of permits that we wouldn’t have resources for.”
The air pollution control division spends the majority of its time regulating permits for gases that make up a much smaller part of emissions — like sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide — which have traditionally been considered more toxic than carbon dioxide.
Vermont’s big six
Out of Vermont’s six big greenhouse gas polluters, the J.C. McNeil generating plant in Burlington’s Intervale polluted the most, accounting for 42 percent of the state’s large-facility emissions. Vermont’s largest biomass power plant released 355,606 metric tons of CO2e in 2011. Ninety-seven percent of that came from wood biomass; the rest was natural gas burned to meet electricity demand.
John Irving is the power supply manager for Burlington Electric. He says wood energy has net-zero emissions in the long run.
“It’s pretty close to a closed cycle,” he said.
Some, like Irving, argue wood energy is carbon-neutral because trees grow back and reabsorb carbon dioxide. Other scientists challenge that idea, arguing that wood is less efficient than most fossil fuels and that trees take a long time to grow back, longer than we have to reduce emissions.
Christopher Kilian of the Conservation Law Foundation says the jury’s still out on biomass’ impact on carbon sequestration, but that “it isn’t fair to take a biomass plant and just lump it in with a bunch of coal plants or other facilities that are emitting a bunch of methane from a bunch of rotting garbage or greenhouse gases from manufacturing. It is a renewable fuel and there is a carbon cycle associated with that facility.”
Nonetheless, Kilian would like to see McNeil become more efficient by, for example, reusing waste heat.
IBM is a close second to McNeil in emissions. The computer processor company’s plant in Essex manufactures semiconductors, a component of most electronics. In the process, IBM emits 285,463 metric tons of CO2e. Most of the plant’s emissions come from the manufacturing process itself, accounting for 249,279 metric tons of CO2e. The rest comes from heating and cooling buildings.
According to its website, IBM as a company has taken huge steps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, cutting them almost in half since 1990. It received the 2013 Climate Leadership Award from the EPA for cutting emissions and requiring its suppliers to cut theirs, too.
IBM’s Essex plant has also worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2001, the facility cut its electric, fuel, and water consumption by 20 percent. As a result, it received a $100,000 grant to replicate those measures with Vermont Technical College and the Howard Center.
In all, IBM spent $3.9 million on energy efficiency investments for the Essex plant. That the company was able to make those changes because it was given an exemption from paying the state’s energy efficiency charge is something Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, sees as a positive.
“I think IBM’s a great example of how the state can impact industry to, if they were already doing the right thing, to accelerate the right thing,” said Klein. The energy efficiency charge would have otherwise funded Efficiency Vermont, the state’s energy efficiency utility.
IBM’s Vermont facility has long been recognized for its environmental measures. It received the Governor’s Excellence Award for environmental achievement from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation every year from 1993-2012. The facility was also awarded National Pollution Prevention awards annually from 2009 to 2011.
The Moretown Landfill ranks third for point-source greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont. In 2011, the landfill emitted 72,222 metric tons of CO2e, plus another 27,990 tons from the gas-to-energy plant on site. As trash decomposes, it releases gases, including methane. Landfills are required to vacuum that gas out of the garbage. The Moretown Landfill sells its gas to Pennsylvania Power & Light, which converts two-thirds of the methane gas into electricity. The remaining third is burned.
But until recently, the landfill struggled with methane leaking out of the surface of the dump, a problem attributed to the poor condition of the gas collection system. Officials from Advanced Disposal, the company that took over the Moretown Landfill last fall, say that when they showed up, the gas vacuum system was in disrepair. They’ve since started extensive repairs on the system, sucking water out of wells and repairing leaks, so that less gas escapes into the air and more is pumped to the generators and flare.
Landfill general manager Mike DiMaggio said the landfill has no plans to install a third generator unless the state allows the landfill to expand. The landfill is in the midst of permitting wrangles with the state for environmental violations and may not stay open past July 15. DiMaggio said he’s known landfills to continue releasing gas for decades after closure.
The Coventry Landfill, owned by Casella Waste Systems, released 70,444 metric tons of CO2e in 2011.
Abbie Webb, a senior environmental analyst with Casella, said reducing emissions at a landfill is about moving quickly to trap and collect gas before it escapes, and maintaining gas wells and cover materials to reduce leaks.
These measures appear to be working. Though the 2012 emissions from Coventry haven’t been reported to the EPA yet, Webb says they declined between 2011 and 2012. Coventry’s gas-to-energy system provided 49,394 megawatt hours of power in 2012, comprising 55 percent of Washington Electric Cooperative’s power. Moretown Landfill produced 24,000 megawatt hours in 2012.
Kilian, of the Conservation Law Foundation, is skeptical of greenwashing the conversion of landfill gas to electricity.
“It’s an unfortunate byproduct of a very wasteful society,” he said. “Burning the methane coming from a landfill converts that greenhouse gas to another greenhouse gas and the profile might be less than a coal plant, but it’s certainly not a big picture solution that we would want to rely on.”
RockTenn recycled paperboard company, located in Sheldon Springs, emitted 38,230 metric tons of CO2e in 2011. The company is North America’s largest paper recycler.
According to RockTenn’s sustainability report, the company’s goals are to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent by 2020. The company cut emissions just 1 percent per ton of production between 2009 and 2012 — and they won’t say whether production will be increasing in the future, which means that their total emissions could increase while emissions per ton of production declines.
Robin Keegan, director of communications for RockTenn, said that the company plans to cut emissions further by switching to burning natural gas instead of coal and oil. The Vermont facility in particular “is constantly looking for ways to improve the energy efficiency of its manufacturing operations,” she said.
For instance, the Missisquoi Mill lowered greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent in 2012. It cut waste per ton of production by half from 2009 to 2012. The facility installed a heat economizer in 2012 that uses latent heat from machinery to heat the buildings. The economizer cut energy use by 10 percent in 2012. The mill in Vermont also uses specially designed trailers, a small truck fleet, and careful planning to minimize trucks driving with empty loads.
The University of Vermont barely qualifies as a large facility, emitting just 27,076 metric tons of CO2e a year. All of that is from heating and cooling buildings with fuel oil and natural gas. In 2010, UVM committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2025.
Gioia Thompson, director of the office of sustainability, said, “We’ve got very aggressive goals and it’s going to be challenging to meet them.”
One challenge to reaching that goal is that nearly 70 percent of UVM’s buildings are more than 25 years old, making it difficult to cut back on heating and cooling demand.
It’s not just the old buildings that leak energy. Large, complex, laboratory buildings with forced ventilation are a major sink for heating and cooling, too, said Thompson.
“There are about a dozen buildings on campus that represent about half of the energy savings opportunities on campus,” said Thompson. Fix the leaks in these few buildings, and UVM could significantly improve energy efficiency.
But renovating buildings by adding insulation or replacing windows and doors — what Thompson calls “envelope issues” — is not likely.
“There’s really no incentive,” she said. “Anything that has to do with envelope issues is extremely expensive.” And there’s just not enough money available, she said.
The university has a $13 million energy revolving fund, the biggest of its kind at any college or university. Students also pay $10 per semester toward a clean energy fund, which pays for renewable energy and education. And the school is hoping to use the money it already sets aside for electricity to buy cleaner energy through Burlington Electric, a move that is hindered by Vermont’s complete regulation of electric utilities.
None of these funding sources pay for renovating buildings. Instead, UVM has focused on improving the efficiency of producing and transporting heat to buildings. But, Thompson added, “We can’t get to our target simply by being efficient.”
That’s why Thompson’s office is investigating carbon offsets. By paying to sequester carbon — in trees, usually — UVM can achieve net zero emissions faster and more completely.
Even carbon offsets are fraught with complications for UVM.
“It’s going to require some uncomfortable decisions,” said Thompson. “Some schools have gone ahead and purchased 100 percent renewable energy from wind. I think our institution would be very uncomfortable doing that right now, with the conversation about wind in the state.”
Nonetheless, UVM is already on its way. Since 2009, its emissions have declined by 10 percent, even though the campus has expanded.
Vermont’s target greenhouse gas reductions are 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. In spite of the rosy picture painted by many of these companies, none but IBM are already cutting emissions at a pace that would get them to the state’s goal in time.
Kilian says more opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing should be explored. “I would assume there would be opportunities for efficiency upgrades and fuel switching there, and it should be explored by Vermont. If we’re serious about these goals that we’ve set for ourselves, then we should explore these options.”