This commentary is by Elena Mihaly, vice president and director of the Conservation Law Foundation Vermont.
For the second time in three years, a subcommittee of the Vermont Climate Council has recommended that the state stop building wood-burning plants to generate electricity, stop any expansion of existing plants, and determine whether and how to phase them out.
And, for the second time, the Climate Council declined to act.
The decision to phase out biomass in Vermont isn’t easy. To phase out biomass, we need to start planning for the solar, wind and transmission facilities that will replace the state’s McNeil and Ryegate plants in a manner that doesn’t disrupt grid reliability or stability.
It’s understandable that the country’s fourth most-forested state turned to burning wood to create electricity, but in the interest of slowing climate change, cutting air pollution and creating jobs, it’s time for Vermont to transition to cleaner energy sources.
In recent years, the science has evolved dramatically when it comes to our understanding of the impacts of burning wood to generate electricity. Burning 76 tons of chipped hardwood an hour at McNeil or 250,000 tons of wood chips a year at Ryegate can’t be viewed as green or renewable. In fact, it’s unhealthy for forests, our air, and the planet.
Science shows that biomass emissions can put more pollution into our air and lungs than coal plants, and that the best role for trees in fighting climate change is a long life of storing carbon in well-managed forests where hardwoods are allowed to grow taller and older. It takes nearly a century for trees to reabsorb enough carbon to make burning wood climate-neutral.
Given the pace of climate change, we don’t have a century to spare. Burlington’s winters have grown warmer over the last 50 years at a higher rate than any other community in America. And the 90-degree days we experienced this spring are a stark portrayal of what’s to come as Vermont sees more frequent high-heat days, among other climate extremes.
Our neighbors in Massachusetts have largely rejected biomass plants as part of the state’s renewable energy regulations. But Massachusetts is not the most important neighboring state in deciding the future of McNeil. The plant is profitable only because its owners sell their “green energy” credits in the Connecticut renewable energy credit market.
Without that revenue, McNeil is an expensive burden to Vermont families and businesses, and a money loser for its owners. And Connecticut, looking at the science, is now questioning the wisdom of that policy and could amend its portfolio standard by eliminating biomass from its list of eligible renewable sources of energy. That decision would make McNeil economically unsustainable.
The process of phasing out biomass will require an assessment of what, if any, replacement power will be needed, and a plan around ensuring an opportunity for affected workers to transition to replacement jobs, along with a host of other considerations. And the Climate Council’s Biomass Task Group recognized this. One of the group’s recommendations to the council was to investigate whether, when, and how Vermont would phase out electricity from its two wood-burning plants.
Specifically, the group identified that the study should look at the impacts of a phase-out on climate emissions, air quality and jobs in the forest economy, among other topics. Indeed, any phase-out would require careful crafting of a just transition for Vermont’s forest economy, acknowledging the sensitivity around market conditions for the material inputs currently employed at the plants, and the importance of those markets in supporting private landowners maintaining Vermont’s forests and the ecosystem services they provide.
We simply cannot burn our way out of the climate crisis. We need to start planning to replace the electricity that climate-damaging biomass produces with hilltop wind and rooftop and roadside solar. Both will produce jobs. Both will be truly renewable, and nobody will be breathing pollution from trees burned before their time.
We are not going to eliminate our reliance on biomass electricity generation tomorrow, but given the urgency of the climate emergency, we need to start planning for that possibility today. And a good start would be for the Climate Council to finally adopt the recommendations of the Biomass Task Group and include investigating a potential phase-out of biomass as an addendum to the Climate Action Plan.
