This commentary is by Jim Hurt, a resident of Woodstock.
Climate-related flooding should concentrate our support for Land Conservation Bill H.126.
Healthy, plentiful forests absorb rain like a sponge, thereby minimizing erosion and the awful mayhem we now see. Clear-cutting forests exacerbates flooding and emits much CO2.
With that in mind, here is the gist of recent recommendations to the Vermont Climate Council and Gov. Scott, calling for rapid cultivation of hemp biofuels in tandem with the profitable transformation of Vermont’s two wood plants, McNeil and Ryegate, into negative-emission power and storage stations.
These plants emit over 600,000 tons of CO2 a year, based on EPA estimates. Or the Vermont state government, Vermont utilities and Vermont plant owners can profitably renovate these plants with EPA and Department of Energy support to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 600,000 tons and remove at least 600,000 more tons per year from the sky at the same time.
Hemp removes CO2 from air quite readily. Hemp biofuels can supplement and/or replace fossil and forest fuels at competitive prices. For background, see Kevin McCallum’s review in Seven Days on Vermont’s energy future.
A similar restoration plan for Vermont Yankee is also financially attractive and will certainly create more jobs, profits and climate benefits than building a new nuclear plant there, as industry advocates still seek. Any nuke plan for Vermont Yankee, if seriously proposed, is likely to become a radioactive third rail to most voters in the tri-state region. The nuclear waste crisis is only getting worse.
Besides, Vermont is way overdependent for two-thirds of its power on Hydro-Quebec and Seabrook nuclear. Both are environmentally problematic or ticking bombs. Take your pick.
Rotting biomass emits much greenhouse gas. Worse, native fishing villages have suffered from methyl mercury poisoning over decades. Nuclear plant ills are etched in thousands of graves and contaminated lives the world over. Vermont’s entire premise for buying Hydro-Quebec and Seabrook power — all green and benign — is terribly wrong.
Fortunately, industrial hemp can be cultivated to remove CO2 from air and produce low-cost, low-carbon biofuels, such as ethanol, biogasoline and biodiesel. Hemp removes CO2 from air faster than trees via photosynthesis. Hemp makes CBD, milk, bread, fabrics, drywall and car parts as well as biofuels. Hemp is a cash and cover crop that restores soil through crop rotation.
Then, thanks to new chemistry, CO2 gas from burning hemp biofuels in power plants or engines can be captured at the point of emission and reused cost-effectively to make H2 and compatible, synthetic e-fuels, such as ethanol, methanol, butanol, gasoline or diesel. CO2 can also be catalyzed into graphite and calcium carbonate to make graphene, carbon fiber and concrete.
Thus, CO2 from power plants is not only “reduced” but eliminated. At the same time, CO2 is “removed” from the atmosphere by continuous cultivation of hemp biofuels, thereby enabling and actuating proven, negative carbon emissions. Valuable carbon offsets, tax credits and/or renewable energy certificates will follow. Burn hemp fuels, less forest fuels, least of all fossil fuels and harvest more solar is part of the idea here.
Fortuitously, single-pole tracking solar-power systems can be aligned to facilitate farming without sacrificing farmland to fixed solar arrays. Vermont farmers can harvest sunlight, hemp or beans with no loss. Monoculture palm oil, corn ethanol and fossil fuels should be gradually rejected and replaced with cleaner biofuels made from hemp, sunn hemp, sorghum, switchgrass and pine.
In drier climes, guayule, jojoba, jatropha and pongamia are desert plants that need little water or fertilizer to make biofuel. Likewise, halophytes and kelp can thrive in seawater even in hot deserts.
Another bonus for renovating Vermont’s wood plants to cut CO2 is the opportunity to enhance their energy efficiency, now only 25%. For each ton of wood burned, only one-quarter of the heat becomes watts. Yikes!
One solution is to send waste steam from the McNeil turbine to district heat in Burlington, still a good idea after 30 years of cautious, meticulous study and review. Go for it!
Yet, even more high-temperature heat can be recovered from the exhaust stack to make fuel-free electricity from the Organic Rankine Cycle method or Stirling engines. These two upgrades — one for CO2 capture and reuse, one for raw efficiency — converge in the redesign of the exhaust system, which might then include new scrubbers for NOX, SOX, particulates and other fumes.
All power plants can now be transformed to save climate, nurture forests and benefit consumers, utilities, construction workers, farmers and foresters.
Theoretically, a sustainably managed forest or set of forests can store much more carbon per year than released by logging and downstream use, including for wood chips and pellets for power plants or buildings. Let carbon forests proliferate by harvesting wisely. Don’t cut too much too soon. Accurate carbon accounting and tight control of forest inventory — t that is, trees — allows a yearly quota of wood to be sold as “carbon neutral” to a degree consistent with new EU rules for wood emissions.
Good wood is worth more than bad wood and foresters can charge more for it. The forest industry should cut no wood before its time and plant trees fast. Clear-cutting forests should be subject to fines.
Ideally, Vermont’s wood plants can burn a mix of a) wood pellets from carbon forests that are managed and proven to store at least three times more carbon than released per year, b) fuel pellets from the stem of the hemp plant (the shiv), c) biodiesel from hemp seeds, d) ethanol from the rest.
These biofuels can also be sold as lower-carbon biofuels for vehicles, buildings and factories. Over time, foresters and landowners can gradually increase total output even as they cut an ever-smaller percentage of a rapidly expanding forest pie. Carbon offsets will apply if storage is proven.
Besides, restoring and expanding forests and greening deserts will cool climate significantly. As it is now, there is too much clear-cutting and overlogging in Vermont to rest on rosy claims of forest growth. Something is amiss. The rate of logging is too fast. For a partial list of clear cuts on 30,000 acres and 50,000 acres of other logging in the Green Mountain National Forest alone, click here.
Worldwide, the forest industry emits three times more than aviation or twice that of Russia — 3.5 billion tons per year, according to a report July 12 in The Hill, citing a study in Nature July 5. The carbon costs of global wood harvests.
To sum up, Vermont can keep more dollars at home by reducing imports from Hydro-Quebec and Seabrook nuclear. McNeil and Ryegate can burn less wood and more biofuels from Vermont farms. The ever-useful switching yard can directly plug in MW-scale batteries and local solar farms that simultaneously grow hemp, sunflowers and/or beans.
CO2 emissions can be captured and reused to make synthetic fuels and feedstocks. Total electric output can increase by 15% to 20% with more efficiency, batteries, biofuels, synfuels and solar. In the process, these plants can redefine their carbon profiles to justify carbon offsets consistent with new EU rules on wood emissions coming this way.
Unfortunately, Gov. Scott and Vermont utilities are drifting toward ever-greater dependence on Hydro-Quebec and outside nuclear just when Vermont dairy farmers need new cash crops and markets, such as hemp and solar.
So, Gov. Scott, what is not to like? A Vermont Green, free-market climate solution can set a good example to the nation, the world and Joe Biden too.
