This commentary is by Nick Persampieri, a Burlington resident who has worked on climate and air pollution issues for many years.
Town Meeting Day Question 2 asks Burlington voters to allow the city to impose a carbon pollution impact fee on new buildings and large, existing commercial and industrial buildings that install fossil fuel rather than “renewable” heating for the stated purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It does not disclose that the city defines renewable to include systems fueled by wood, “renewable” gas, or biodiesel. Because these types of “renewable” heating would not be subject to the fee, imposing a fee on fossil fuel heating would incentivize them.
Incentivizing these types of carbon-intensive, polluting “renewable” heating would increase greenhouse gas emissions, adversely impact public health, and impair forest biodiversity.
Burning wood emits more carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced than burning fossil fuels. Some authorities, such as the Environmental Protection Agency under former President Trump’s Administrator Scott Pruitt, have declared burning wood carbon-neutral. However, the science is clear that burning wood creates a carbon debt relative to burning fossil fuels that can only be repaid over many years as trees regrow.
A meta-analysis of 245 studies found a mean payback period of 102 years for roundwood, 74 years for whole trees, 18 years for residues, 14 years for stumps and 75 years for mixed feedstocks. And this assumes that trees are permitted to regrow. Burning wood is a false climate solution.
The fee is designed to improve the economic prospects for the city’s plans to capture steam from the wood-burning McNeil plant and convey it by pipe to the UVM Medical Center for heating — the so-called district energy system. In December 2018, when Mayor Weinberger announced his support for a statewide carbon pollution fee, he stated: “With a Vermont Carbon Pollution Fee the economics of a district energy system in Burlington would be a slam dunk.”
A true carbon impact fee imposed on all carbon-intensive fuels, including wood, would make retirement of McNeil a slam dunk.
McNeil is the largest stationary source of greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont. It emitted 453,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2021. A September 2022 study prepared by Energy Futures Group, projecting through 2050, concluded that McNeil district heating would increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather than prop up McNeil, the city should begin planning for retirement of the 40-year-old polluting plant. This would allow the ciity to realize real-life greenhouse gas emission reductions from closure of McNeil and from the city’s push toward electrification and heat pumps — the benefits of which are undermined by McNeil supplying 30% of the city’s electricity.
Incentivizing pellet or wood stoves, especially for primary heating in new construction, is terrible public policy. They provide no greenhouse gas emission benefits relative to gas — at least within the time remaining to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. And such incentives can only detract from the city’s laudable effort to promote electrification and heat pumps.
The city should require sufficient weatherization of new construction, perhaps through mandating passive house standards, to permit sole reliance on heat pumps.
Pellet and wood stoves emit harmful air pollutants, including fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds, including benzene and formaldehyde. These emissions can cause numerous adverse health effects, including coughing, wheezing, asthma attacks, heart attacks, and premature death.
The American Lung Association recommends that people “avoid burning wood … to heat the home or water.” EPA recently phased in more stringent particulate matter standards. However, a 2021 study by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management found that flaws in EPA’s procedures for certifying that new wood-burning devices meet the standards provides no confidence that new devices better protect public health. And there are no standards for the harmful pollutants other than fine particulate matter.
“Renewable” gas like natural gas is primarily methane. Its processing from biogas generated by landfills and anaerobic digesters to make it suitable for natural gas pipeline transport is inefficient and increases greenhouse gas emissions. And its burning has the same greenhouse gas emissions as the natural gas with which it is mixed in the pipeline. There is no justification for incentivizing “renewable” gas.
Nor is there any justification for incentivizing biofuels. Their production and use emits greenhouse gases and other harmful pollutants and has caused destruction of forests and displacement of land used for food production worldwide.
The carbon impact fee flows from the City’s Net Zero Energy Roadmap, which defines net zero in terms of reducing fossil fuel use, while the rest of the world defines it as reducing greenhouse gases emissions to achieve a balance with greenhouse gas removal by forests and oceans. It also flows from city officials’ reliance on its wood-burning utility for climate policy recommendations.
The city draws a false contrast between fossil fuels and renewables. Some renewables, such as solar, wind and geothermal, are low-carbon and clean; others are worse than fossil fuels. Please vote no on Question 2.
