Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Josh Schlossberg, an organizer for Biofuelwatch, an anti-biomass group.
The State of Vermont’s Biomass Energy Working Group, which has set out to “analyze current issues in the biomass industry in order to develop a coherent body of recommendations” for the Legislature, has issued its 2011 Interim Report. Despite many concerns with the report itself—particularly failures to address impacts of forest biomass incineration on public health, climate change, and ecosystem health—my greatest concern has to do with its timing.
Currently, out-of-state Beaver Wood Energy, LLC is proposing two 29.5-megawatt electricity generating biomass incinerators (with adjacent wood pellet manufacturing) for Pownal and Fair Haven. As you read this, Beaver Wood Energy is pushing the Vermont Public Service Board to grant them an unprecedented partial permit, so they can break ground before 2011—qualifying them for $50-80 million worth of Federal stimulus funding, per facility. Potentially impacted communities are organizing to oppose the construction of at least one of these facilities (benningtonberkshirecc.org).
The Biomass Working Group recommends that an additional 600,000-750,000 green tons of wood be made available annually for biomass burning in Vermont, on top of existing facilities. Those in favor of expanding small-scale wood heating across the state need to be aware that one of Beaver Wood’s incinerators alone would commandeer 583,500 tons of wood, the vast majority of the recommended additional wood supply.
In order to ensure the Biomass Working Group’s report is more than just a symbolic gesture, the Vermont State Legislature needs to enforce a moratorium on the construction of new large-scale electricity generating biomass facilities until the final report is released in 2012.
