This commentary is by Ashley Adams, a business owner who lives in Burlington.
If you follow the news, you are likely as alarmed as I am about the climate chaos impacting millions of souls around the world thanks to our callous, multidecade failure to take meaningful, collective action.
Climate and ecological collapse is happening right now and the window of opportunity for doing something about it is slamming shut. That is why the dithering in Vermont around biomass combustion for electricity is so maddening to those of us who have been watching.
And this is why Vermonters should be outraged by Burlington Electric Department’s $42 million plan to lock in the dirty McNeil biomass power plant for generations to come, at the very moment when we should be charting a path to a truly low-carbon energy future.
There is no reason to relearn what the Public Service Board already knew back in 2014 when it rejected a proposed biomass plant in Springfield, concluding that the project would undermine Vermont’s ability to meet statutory goals for reducing greenhouse gases “as a result of the large annual releases of greenhouse gases that result from combustion of wood fuel.”
Indeed, as recently reported, “McNeil spews about 400,000 tons of (CO2) every year, more than any other energy facility in the state. That doesn’t include additional gas released by the machines that harvest, process and transport the chips to McNeil.”
We cannot get away with burning trees to generate electricity and still meet our greenhouse gas reduction goals. Sustainable forestry practices do not change this fact. Per the IPCC “green pathway,” we need “steeper, faster emissions reductions and increased forest growth for carbon drawdown.”
This is why 800 climate scientists signed a letter in 2021 to President Biden and other world leaders, urging them to “not undermine both climate goals and the world’s biodiversity by shifting from burning fossil fuels to burning trees to generate energy.”
The overwhelming evidence makes it clear that Vermont should entirely phase out biomass electricity generation in Vermont.
Of course, there will be impacts to Vermont’s forest economy and there absolutely must be a just transition for all workers who rely upon our biomass plants. No one denies this. But this should not prevent us from a necessary transition away from an energy source that is more polluting than coal, which wreaks havoc on our forests and fouls the air that we breathe.
Action in Vermont on biomass lags far behind other nearby states. Do we have the ability to turn a critical eye on our long-held assumptions?
Biomass is being phased out across the region because it threatens public health and undermines climate goals:
- New York removed biomass from the state’s definition of “renewable energy” in 2019.
- Massachusetts removed woody biomass from its Renewable Portfolio Standard in 2022.
- Connecticut began phasing down Renewable Energy Credits for biomass plants in 2022.
- New Hampshire ended subsidies for six biomass plants in 2019. Gov Sununu said, “Those biomass plants cost us $2 billion in subsidies since the ’70s.”
A recent survey conducted by the Vermont Department of Public Service found that, among sources of electricity, burning trees ranked behind hydro, solar, wind, and even methane digesters at farms and landfills. The same survey found that “impacts on natural resources, like forest (sic), rivers, and wildlife was the top rated environmental concern” for nearly seven out of 10 Vermonters, across political ideologies.
Why should Vermonters continue to subsidize our two biomass plants in Burlington and Ryegate? How much have public subsidies cost Vermont taxpayers over the last several decades and how much will they continue to cost?
The Burlington City Council is poised to vote on the future of the McNeil biomass power plant. Will councilors listen to the science and the concerns of the people of Vermont?
It’s past time for Vermont to break with its addiction to biomass, and for elected leaders to own up to the facts.
