This commentary is by Paul Bierman of Burlington, a professor with expertise in climate, geology and environmental science at the University of Vermont Rubenstein School of the Environment and the Gund Institute for Environment.
A proposal to increase the efficiency of Burlington’s McNeil wood-fired power plant is generating controversy among the citizens of our city. It’s contentious enough that one group invited out-of-state experts to our City Hall so that they could argue against this new infrastructure.
Burlington Electric has worked hard for decades to reduce our carbon footprint with innovative energy efficiency programs and generous financial incentives for citizens and businesses. The latest project involves piping hot water from the McNeil wood-fired power plant up the hill to the University of Vermont campus and Medical Center. Termed district energy, this project will capture some of the waste heat released when the plant burns wood to generate power.
As an environmental scientist, I have done my best to consider all sides of this debate. My years at UVM include service on a committee nearly two decades ago that supported a then-rejected project similar to today’s proposal. As someone who has studied, taught and thought about climate for several decades, and who worries daily about Greenland and its melting ice, I was initially uncertain about the merits of this project.
In the ideal world, we wouldn’t burn carbon and would generate our power with solar, wind and water. But the world is not ideal and energy transitions don’t happen overnight. Every day McNeil runs without district energy, more waste heat goes to the cooling tower and not to buildings in town — a striking inefficiency. This is why I support Burlington’s proposal to increase the efficiency of McNeil — now — while at the same time, aggressively and explicitly planning for a no-carbon future.
Of course it would be better if we’d built district energy 20 years ago or if tomorrow we could replace McNeil’s 50 megawatts of wood-powered baseload (always on) power with solar or wind — and power storage to cover us at night and when there’s no wind. But given the opposition that any sort of large-scale renewable energy development has drawn in Vermont, that’s not going to happen quickly, if at all.
If McNeil shuts down, as some have suggested, we’d have no choice but to power an increasingly electrified Burlington using largely fossil-fuel-derived energy. Power generation is a zero sum game. If we stop burning wood here, then our power will come from the New England grid.
Other power plants in New England predominately burn natural gas — supplemented by oil — and even coal-fired generation on the coldest days. When any of us flip on a light switch, Burlington Electric must be ready with electrons generated somewhere. The data are compelling: Replacing wood with fossil-fuel-derived energy is not something the climate system needs any of us to do right now.
So, I’ve concluded after months of thinking about this: Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? District energy makes a difference right now and reduces waste. Energy infrastructure doesn’t last forever. When we renovated our home in Burlington in 1994, Burlington Electric paid us to take out electric baseboard heat and replace it with far-more-efficient natural gas. This year, they paid us to install a heat pump so we could burn less gas.
Times change, technology changes. McNeil will be retired, eventually. But now is not yet that time.
What we can’t do is build district energy and think that’s the end — it’s decidedly not. District energy is a practical, common-sense bridge to lower-carbon renewables, none of which are environmentally benign. While making McNeil more efficient now, let’s kickstart the discussion today about how to replace the plant so we don’t have to burn wood and can leave carbon in the forests.
I’d gladly give up half a square mile of the Intervale so that solar panels could supersede McNeil’s 50 megawatts of power on sunny days — although that project would be 2.5 times larger than even the biggest solar farm in Vermont today. I’d also argue to build 20 or so towering wind turbines on Green Mountain ridgelines sufficient to replace McNeil’s capacity. But I respect that others, maybe many, would disagree.
And even if we build this renewable generation, we need to solve the intermittency issues intrinsic to these power sources. Anybody with me to build pumped storage in Burlington? Imagine pumps, powered by excess electrons generated on sunny days and during windy times, filling a large reservoir at the top of the hill with water from Lake Champlain. Then, when the sun sets and the wind calms, that water, running down to the lake, would spin turbines generating power.
We could have a swimming hole right on the UVM campus and who knows, perhaps even a net-zero water slide or two?
It’s all doable. It all takes time — at least years, more likely decades. Meanwhile, let’s get as much energy as possible out of the fuels we do burn. To stabilize Earth’s climate, we need to be thinking together and outside our individual boxes. District energy, and the added efficiency it provides, is an important, realistic, practical and, most importantly, shovel-ready stepping stone.
