Sarah Gardner, Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Studies and Lecturer in Environmental Studies speaks out about biomass in a letter to the editor of the North Adams Transcript, originally printed Saturday, October 23, 2010.
By Guest Blogger, Sarah Gardner
We like electricity but we don’t like power plants. We want to wake up in a warm house, turn on the lights and drink hot coffee, but we don’t want more air pollution.
Those of us in North Berkshire benefit from electricity that is generated elsewhere. We have the luxury of not directly experiencing the pollution, trucks, mining, drilling and scarred landscapes that accompany electricity generation. The debate over the biomass plant proposed for the old racetrack site in Pownal has illuminated this contradiction.
Electricity in New England is generated from oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower: A small fraction comes from wind and solar. Most have detrimental social and environmental impacts: mountaintop removal; oil wars and disastrous oil spills; contamination of water supplies and disruption of rural life by hydrofracking for natural gas; radioactive waste that has no safe storage facility; and habitat destruction from damming rivers.
Wind and solar power are the least harmful, but unfortunately they are not yet developed enough to meet the demand for electricity.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “If developed properly, biomass can and should supply increasing amounts of biopower. In fact, in numerous analyses of how America can transition to a clean energy future, sustainable biomass is a critical renewable resource.”
There are negative impacts to be sure, but in comparative perspective, they may be less harmful than the alternatives. Not all biomass plants are the same: Low-emissions European-designed wood boilers are cleaner and more efficient that the typical U.S. boilers. While reliance on local energy supplies like wood is distasteful to many, it may be more environmentally responsible to produce electricity locally than to rely on distant fossil fuel electric plants.
The risks and trade-offs must be weighed.
There are many facts missing from the debate over the proposed Beaver Wood plant, making it impossible to accurately evaluate its impact on this region. More information is needed, and outside evaluations should be done.
Once we learn what the air emissions will be and where they will go, how the river and the aquifer and the forests and roads will be affected, then we can evaluate the proposed plant and compare its potential impact to that of Vermont’s current electricity sources.
With Vermont Yankee expected to shut down, the state needs new electricity generation. Instead of simply opposing this plant, let’s consider what sort of power source we would support. If we don’t consider its positive potential and the Pownal plant is defeated, Beaver Wood might move to a less organized Vermont community: In that case, we would have succeeded only in displacing this problem onto others who may not have the ability to fight for a cleaner plant.
Instead, we should use our considerable local expertise to thoroughly analyze the impacts of the proposed plant. If we find the risks to be unacceptable, we can seize the opportunity to try to work with Beaver Wood to improve its plans for the plant. We can push for a clean, sustainable operation, or a low-emissions gasification plant like the McNeil Generating Station in Burlington, or we can work with Pownal to propose another form of clean power generation at that site.
Vermont needs electricity, and Pownal can use the jobs and the tax revenue from development of its long-vacant site. The best outcome of the biomass debate could well be the development of the racetrack into a demonstration site for state-of-the-art local, sustainable electricity generation.
Sarah S. Gardner
Williamstown