SOME IMPLICATIONS OF
BIOMASS POWER DEVELOPMENT
IN NEW YORK STATE
MARY S. BOOTH
MASSACHUSETTS ENVIRONMENTAL ENERGY ALLIANCE
JANUARY 11, 2010
BIOMASS EMITS MORE CO2 THAN FOSSIL FUELS
1. Wood inherently emits more carbon per Btu
–
–
–
Natural gas: 117 lb CO2/MMBtu*
Bituminous coal: 205 lb CO2/MMBtu**
Wood: 213 lb CO2/MMBtu bone dry
1. Wood is often wet, dirty (degrades heating value)
–
at 45% mc, 237 lb CO2/MMBtu
2. Biomass boilers operate less efficiently than fossil fuel
boilers
–
–
–
Utility-scale biomass boiler: 24%
Average efficiency US coal fleet: 33%
Average gas plant: 43%***
In practice: per MWh, biomass emits about 150% the CO2 of
coal, and 300 – 400% the CO2 of natural gas
*http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html
** http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/co2_article/co2.html
*** http://www.npc.org/Study_Topic_Papers/4-DTG-ElectricEfficiency.pdf
2
MANOMET AGREES:
BIOMASS EMITS MORE CO2 THAN FOSSIL FUELS, EVEN
TAKING FOREST REGROWTH INTO ACCOUNT
Manomet Biomass Study, Massachusetts
Conclusions:
Even taking forest regrowth into consideration, net biomass
emissions for utility-scale biomass generation still exceed those
from coal in 2050; carbon profile for small-scale CHP and
thermal plants somewhat better, but still close to fossil fuels.
Biomass power cannot be considered carbon neutral, “low
carbon, or even close to “low carbon” if carbon additionality
rules violated… and especially when trees are harvested to
provide fuel.
Sustainability does not equal carbon neutrality!
3
LET IT GROW BACK? CORRECTLY ACCOUNTING
FOR CARBON EMISSIONS
1. Regrowth ties up the carbon that was
released;
2. But forests are already sequestering carbon...
How do we take that into account?
4
5
FOREST REGROWTH UNDER BAU AND BIOMASS SCENARIOS
6
CARBON RECOVERY AFTER ONE YEAR’S CUTTING
Change in Stored Carbon: Biomass Stand Carbon minus BAU Stand Carbon
(Previous slide: the BAU stand carbon was 70 tons; the biomass stand
carbon was reduced to 50 tons; 50 minus 70 = -20)
7
CARBON RECOVERY AFTER MULTIPLE YEARS CUTTING: FACILITY FOOTPRINT
8
MANOMET
CONCLUSIONS
“Increases in biomass
energy generation can lead
to higher GHG emissions,
even when sustainable
forestry is practiced”
9
NY DRAFT SUSTAINABILITY STANDARD
1. Forest harvesting plan
–
–
–
USFS Forest Stewardship plan, harvest plan
Certificate of Approval under property tax law
Forest Stewardship Council, Sustainable Forestry
Initiative, American Tree Farm certification
2. Maintenance of land for time period
sufficient to resequester carbon/100 years
… but “sustainability” not enough.
10
DRAFT MA REGS: BIOMASS ELIGIBILITY FOR
RENEWABLE ENERGY CREDITS
• Define “eligible biomass fuel” as “waste” wood,
wood from land-clearing, forestry residues
• Restricts forest wood removals to no more than 15%
of commercial timber (equivalent to 50% of residues)
• Minimal efficiency requirements (40%: too low)
– Partial RECs granted for lower efficiency
• Lifecycle emissions after 20 years no more than 50%
of those from natural gas or boiler being replaced.
New York Climate Action Plan:
what role for biomass power?
Technical Work Group scenario for Low-Carbon
Portfolio Standard: 75% of electricity from lowcarbon sources in 2030
– Goal: Addition of 9,000 GWh of “lower carbon sustainable
wood and other biomass”
12
Existing generation and projected 2030 generation
under 9,000 GWh scenario
MWh from Wood and Wood-derived fuels
10,000,000
9,000,000
8,000,000
7,000,000
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
2030
2040
(Data 1990 – 2009 from Energy Information Administration)
In 2009: 536 GWh from wood and wood-derived fuels, 1.66 GWh from
“other” biomass .
Where will fuel for the increase come from?
13
Woody biomass availability in NY
Mill wastes largely spoken for
– CHP, pellets, other uses (only 1.8% unused nationally)
Logging residues: ~ 1.08 m dry tons/yr, total.
– assume 50% available (extremely optimistic).
C&D waste wood: ORNL NY estimate 1.9 m tons, NREL estimate 2.04 m
tons total
– overwhelmingly in urban areas – air pollution issues
– given that “clean” wood is limited and has other uses, assume 50% total is
available
Total of ~ 2,200 GWh generation supportable with “waste” wood,
with scrounging.
New biomass plants will harvest trees that would not
otherwise have been cut, leading to significant carbon
emissions.
14
Industry agrees
William Perritt, editor of RISI wood industry newsletter,
speaking of the recent expansion in facilities:
“Hungry for large volumes of wood, and frequently armed
with government subsidies, the nascent operations have
triggered wood price spikes and cross-grade competition in the
tightest markets. The oft-repeated assumption that forests
and sawmills are littered with waste wood, just waiting for
cheap home is proving largely erroneous.”
15
MA: “The Fitchburg Power Station is a 17 MW waste wood and landfill gas fired
power facility. The
facility
burns whole tree chips”
NH: “Tamworth Power Station is a 22.5 MW waste wood power facility … The facility uses wood from trees
unsuitable for lumber or pulp”
NH: “The Bethlehem Power Station burns low quality wood, which is continuously replenished through the natural
forest cycles. The
facility uses approximately 675 tons (per day) of whole tree chips”
NH:
Schiller Station: “Currently, PSNH’s Schiller Station in Portsmouth operates three 50 megawatt coal-fired steam
boilers built in the 1950s. PSNH will replace one of these coal boilers with a new fluidized-bed boiler. This state-ofthe-art boiler will
electricity.”
burn whole-tree wood chips and other clean low-grade wood materials to generate
VT: “The Ryegate Power Station burns 250,000 tons of whole tree chips per year”
VT: McNeil Station (Burlington Electric): “Seventy percent of the wood chips that fuel the McNeil Station are
called whole-tree chips and come from low quality trees and harvest residues. The trees, a majority of
which are on privately owned woodlands, are cut and chipped in the forest. Clearcutting of woodlands is
limited to areas that need to establish a new crop of trees. It may also be used in some
instances to improve wildlife habitat. In these cases, the size of the area cleared is limited to a maximum of 25 acres.
To run McNeil at full load, approximately
76 tons of whole-tree chips are consumed per
hour. That amounts to about 30 cords per hour (there are about 2.5 tons of chips per cord of green wood)”
EXISTING PLANTS ARE USING WHOLE TREE CHIPS
16
Current status NY biomass
• Existing capacity, 2009: 97 MW from wood,
396 MW from “other biomass”
• About 120 - 150 MW in the pipeline
– Will require at least ~1.9 m green tons (~1.07 m
dry tons)
But biomass power plants are not the only new
consumers of “energy wood”…
17
Wood demand (green tons) of recently built and
proposed “wood energy” facilities in NY
Company
Wood Pellets
Woodstone Pellets
City/Town
tons
Moreau
200,000
New England Wood Pellet
Curran Renewable Energy
Deposit
Massena
200,000
200,000
New England Wood Pellet
Essex Box & Pallet
Schuyler
Keeseville
200,000
8,000
Geddes
520,000
Wood Energy
Catalyst Renewables
Support
cancelled?
Alliance Energy Renewables Ogdensburg
U.S. Salt
Watkins Glen
325,000
167,000
$400,000 from NYSERDA
NRG Energy
Newton Falls Fine Paper
Dunkirk
Newton Falls
195,000
130,000
10 yr contract from NYSERDA
$750,000 from National Grid
Griffiss Utility Services
Lockheed Martin
Rome
Owego
124,800
30,000
$35 m financing from NYSPSC
$250,000 from NYSERDA
Taylor Biomass
Montgomery
450,000
$300,000 from NYSERDA
Niagra Generating Facility
Niagra Cty
253,000
10 yr contract from NYSERDA
Total:
3,002,800
Earlier slide: availability of “waste” from forestry and construction-demolition activities
~1.5 m dry tons, equivalent to ~2.7 m green tons. New demand already exceeds supply.
18
PELLET PRODUCTION INCREASES FOREST CUTTING
1. “… we found the need to go to a raw material source other than
bark. What we went to was basically the whole tree, which we
chipped and introduced through the infeed of our system.”
•
“When we get into a 100 percent whole tree run, we’re
consuming upwards of 50 to 60 tons an hour”
2. "We're not taking any waste residuals. We're only taking whole
logs, and not using any bark.“
1. “The company will need 200,000 tons a year of whole logs to
operate the pellet mill at full capacity.”
PROPOSED BIOMASS POWER AND PELLET FACILITIES, NEW
ENGLAND AND NEW YORK
Biomass Power
Plainfield Renewable Energy
NRG Energy
Watertown Renewable Power
Russell Biomass
Pioneer Renewable Energy
Berkshire Generations
Palmer Renewable Energy
CCI Energy
Laidlaw Berlin
Concord Steam
Clean Power Development
Clean Power Development
Laidlaw Energy
Indeck Energy
Catalyst Renewables
Alliance Energy Renewables
Newton Falls Fine Paper
U.S. Salt
NRG Energy
Griffiss Utility Services
Beaver Wood Energy
Beaver Wood Energy
Winstanley Enterprises
Access Ludlow Clean Energy
City/Town
Plainfield
Uncasville
Watertown
Russell
Greenfield
Pittsfield
Springfield
Fitchburg
Berlin
Concord
Winchester
Berlin
Henniker
Alexandria
Geddes
Ogdensburg
Newton Falls
Watkins Glen
Dunkirk
Rome
Fair Haven
Pownal
North Springfield
Ludlow
State
CT
CT
CT
MA
MA
MA
MA
MA
NH
NH
NH
NH
NH
NH
NY
NY
NY
NY
NY
NY
VT
VT
VT
VT
tons
512,656
539,638
404,728
674,547
634,074
539,638
512,656
67,455
876,911
202,364
269,819
337,274
269,819
215,855
539,638
337,274
134,909
200,000
202,364
129,513
391,237
391,237
337,274
337,274
Pellets
Corinth Wood Pellets
International WoodFuels
Maine Woods Pellet
Geneva Wood Fuels
Greenova LLC
Lakes Region Pellets
New England Wood Pellet
Woodstone Pellets
New England Wood Pellet
Curran Renewable Energy
New England Wood Pellet
Essex Box & Pallet
Vermont Pellet Works
Renewable Energy Company
Vermont Wood Pellet Co.
Beaver Wood Energy
Woodstone Pellets (Greenova)
Vermont Biomass Energy
City/Town
Corinth
Burnham
Athens
Strong
Berlin
Barnstead
Jaffrey
Moreau
Deposit
Massena
Schuyler
Chesterfield
Lyndonville
Island Pond
Clarendon
Fair Haven
Berlin
Island Pond
State
ME
ME
ME
ME
NH
NH
NH
NY
NY
NY
NY
NY
VT
VT
VT
VT
NH
VT
Total new wood demand:
12.4 million green tons annually
Existing biomass fuel use:
~8 million green tons annually
Total roundwood harvest, 2006:
22,077,140 green tons
tons
280,000
200,000
200,000
160,000
360,000
176,000
50,000
280,000
200,000
200,000
200,000
140,000
150,000
100,000
20,000
220,000
200,000
200,000
EXISTING FACILITIES ARE WORRIED ABOUT
COMPETITION FOR WOOD
LAIDLAW 70 MW PLANT IN BERLIN, NH: PETITIONS TO INTERVENE IN POWER
PURCHASE AGREEMENT FROM EXISTING BIOMASS POWER PLANTS
Would require ~900,000 green tons annually. Petitions for intervention in the PPA:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Concord Steam Corp.
Clean Power Development LLC
Bridgewater Power Co.
Pinetree Power Inc.
Pinetree Power-Tamworth Inc.
Springfield Power LLC
Whitefield Power & Light
Indeck Energy
“A petition from the latter six alleges fierce competition for the biomass fuel, saying their own
plants have a substantial interest in its availability and pricing, and Laidlaw’s PPA would directly
affect them.”
RGGI STATES: BIOMASS POWER GENERATION VERSUS CO2 EMISSIONS, 2008
(WOOD/BYPRODUCTS ONLY)
160,000,000
45,000,000
Power generation
Power sector CO2 emissions
40,000,000
140,000,000
CO2 from wood /by-products (tons)
Wood/by-products (MWh)
35,000,000
Total generation (MWh)
120,000,000
Reported power sector CO2 (tons)
30,000,000
100,000,000
25,000,000
80,000,000
20,000,000
60,000,000
15,000,000
40,000,000
10,000,000
20,000,000
5,000,000
0
CT
DE
MA
MD
ME
NH
NJ
NY
RI
VT
CT
DE
MA
MD
ME
NH
NJ
NY
RI
22
VT
QUESTIONS?
mbooth@massenvironmentalenergy.org
GHG EMISSIONS FROM “WASTE” WOOD
• Construction and demolition waste
– “methane myth” of decomposition overstated
– Wood decomposition in landfills: Only 0 – 3% of
the carbon from wood is ever emitted as landfill
gas
• “US landfills serve as a tremendous carbon sink,
effectively preventing major quantities of carbon from
being released back into the atmosphere.”*
*Micales, J.A. and Skog, K.E. 1997. The decomposition of forest products
in landfills. International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation 39:145-158.
24
LANDFILLED WOOD PRODUCTS REPRESENT C SEQUESTRATION
Estimated carbon flux for forest and harvested wood products, from EPA’s Inventory of
greenhouse gas emissions and sinks, 1990 – 2008
25
Onandaga Renewables, Geddes NY
• 507 mmbtu/40 MW
• 562,000 tons of wood; “eligible sources of biomass include…
woody material produced during commercial timber
harvesting”
Emissions
Pollutant
Critical threshold (tons)
Emission (tons)
CO
250
249
NOx
100
99.5
Hazardous Air Pollutants
25
24.5
HCl
10
9.9
566,000 tons of CO2 – (permitting threshold is 75,000 tons)
26
Let's say we have a 100-acre forest that has about 25
tons of green wood standing per acre, and that
sequesters 0.5 tons of new carbon per acre, per year.
So this means that this 100 acres is sequestering 50
tons of new carbon, per year.
When you do carbon accounting for biomass:
1.
2.
You have processes (fossil fuel burning, tree
harvesting and burning) putting carbon into the
air.
You have trees taking carbon out of the air on the
acres you don't harvest - the remaining 98 acres
(in the first year). Trees take both fossil fuel
carbon and biomass carbon out of the air.
When you replace fossil fuels with biomass, you
increase #1, because biomass emits more carbon per
unit energy than even coal. Meanwhile, you are doing
nothing to increase the rate of growth of #2 to
compensate for the increase in carbon emissions.
Under the biomass scenario, let's say 2 acres of the
100 are harvested every year for fuel.
This means the first year you harvest and burn those
two acres, you have liquidated 50 tons of standing
carbon and put it into the atmosphere (2 acres at 25
tons of standing carbon per acre).
The 98 acres that you didn't cut were going to add 49
tons of new carbon (98 acres x 0.5 tons/acre) whether
you harvested those first two acres, or not. This carbon
sequestration would in turn take emissions from fossil
fuels out of the air.
The biomass scenario thus sequesters 49 tons of carbon
(0.5 tons on each of the 98 unharvested acres), and
emits 50 tons of carbon into the atmosphere from the
two harvested acres used as fuel. Under a "regional"
accounting system that allows carbon sequestration on
unharvested lands to compensate for emissions from
harvested lands, the net emission = -49 tons + 50 tons =
1 ton (carbon taken out of the air is expressed as a
negative number).
The no-biomass harvesting/fossil fuel scenario
sequesters 50 tons of carbon (0.5 tons on each of the
100 acres left unharvested). Energy emissions from coal
burning are 33 tons (the amount of carbon emitted by
the amount of energy generation in the biomass
scenario, down-adjusted to account for the lower carbon
output of coal per unit energy).
Net emission: -50 tons + 33 tons = -17 tons
The difference between these two scenarios is thus 18
tons more carbon emitted under the biomass scenario.
27
MAINE: A CASE STUDY IN WHAT NOT TO DO
Power sector in 2007:
• 24% from biomass
• 23% from hydropower
• 41% from natural gas
 Low emissions (on paper): 5.57 million tons CO2
Real (but unreported) emissions from biomass:
• 7.9 million tons CO2
OTHER LIFECYCLE EMISSIONS
e.g., Transportation: Because the energy content
of wood is lower:
• Wood: ~4,258 Btu/lb
• Coal: ~12,250 Btu/lb for bituminous/anthracite
– Requires transporting ~3x more wood to get the
same fuel value
Manomet calculates about 2 gallons of diesel fuel
required per ton of wood, for harvest and transport
29