[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11270-11273]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY DEBATE

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, last week the New York Times ran a 
story, and I ask unanimous consent to have it printed in the Record at 
this time.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, June 18, 2010]

              Net Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny

                          (By Tom Zeller, Jr.)

       Greenfield, MA.--Matthew Wolfe, an energy developer with 
     plans to turn tree branches and other woody debris into 
     electric power, sees himself as a positive force in the 
     effort to wean his state off of planet-warming fossil fuels.
       ``It's way better than coal,'' Mr. Wolfe said, ``if you 
     look at it over its life cycle.''
       Not everyone agrees, as evidenced by lawn signs in this 
     northwestern Massachusetts town reading ``Biomass? No 
     Thanks.''
       In fact, power generated by burning wood, plants and other 
     organic material, which makes up 50 percent of all renewable 
     energy produced in the United States, according to federal 
     statistics, is facing increased scrutiny and opposition.
       That, critics say, is because it is not as climate-friendly 
     as once thought, and the pollution it causes in the short run 
     may outweigh its long-term benefits.
       The opposition to biomass power threatens its viability as 
     a renewable energy source when the country is looking to 
     diversify its energy portfolio, urged on by President Obama 
     in an address to the nation Tuesday. It also underscores the 
     difficult and complex choices state and local governments 
     face in pursuing clean-energy goals.
       Biomass proponents say it is a simple and proved renewable 
     technology based on natural cycles. They acknowledge that 
     burning wood and other organic matter releases carbon dioxide 
     into the atmosphere just as coal does, but point out that 
     trees and plants also absorb the gas. If done carefully, and 
     without overharvesting, they say, the damage to the climate 
     can be offset.
       But opponents say achieving that sort of balance is almost 
     impossible, and carbon-absorbing forests will ultimately be 
     destroyed to feed a voracious biomass industry fueled 
     inappropriately by clean-energy subsidies. They also argue 
     that, like any incinerating operation, biomass plants 
     generate all sorts of other pollution, including particulate 
     matter. State and federal regulators are now puzzling over 
     these arguments.
       Last month, in outlining its plans to regulate greenhouse 
     gases, the Environmental Protection Agency declined to exempt 
     emissions from ``biogenic'' sources like biomass power 
     plants. That dismayed the biomass and forest products 
     industries, which typically describe biomass as ``carbon 
     neutral.''
       The agency said more deliberation was needed.
       Meanwhile, plans for several biomass plants around the 
     country have been dropped because of stiff community 
     opposition.
       In March, a $250 million biomass power project planned for 
     Gretna, Fla., was abandoned after residents complained that 
     it threatened air quality. Two planned plants in Indiana have 
     faced similar grass-roots opposition.
       In April, an association of family physicians in North 
     Carolina told state regulators that biomass power plants 
     there, like other plants and factories that pollute the air, 
     could ``increase the risk of premature death, asthma, chronic 
     bronchitis and heart disease.''
       In Massachusetts, fierce opposition to a handful of 
     projects in the western part of the state, including Mr. 
     Wolfe's, prompted officials to order a moratorium on new 
     permits last December, and to commission a scientific review 
     of the environmental credentials of biomass power.
       That study, released last week, concluded that, at least in 
     Massachusetts, power plants using woody material as fuel 
     would probably prove worse for the climate than existing coal 
     plants over the next several decades. Plants that generate 
     both heat and power, displacing not just coal but also oil 
     and gas, could yield dividends faster, the report said. But 
     in every case, the study found, much depends on what is 
     burned, how it is burned, how forests are managed and how the 
     industry is regulated.
       Ian A. Bowles, the secretary of the Massachusetts Office of 
     Energy and Environmental Affairs, said that biomass power and 
     sustainable forest management were not mutually exclusive. 
     But he also said that the logical conclusion from the study 
     was that biomass plants that generated electricity alone 
     probably should not be eligible for incentives for renewable 
     energy.
       ``That would represent a significant change in policy,'' 
     Mr. Bowles said.
       The biomass industry argues that studies like the one in 
     Massachusetts do not make a clear distinction between wood 
     harvested specifically for energy production and the more 
     common, and desirable, practice of burning wood and plant 
     scraps left from agriculture and logging operations.
       The Biomass Power Association, a trade group based in 
     Maine, said in a statement last week that it was ``not aware 
     of any facilities that use whole trees for energy.''
       During a recent visit to an old gravel pit outside of town 
     where he hopes to build his 47-megawatt Pioneer Renewable 
     Energy project, Mr. Wolfe said the plant would be capable of 
     generating heat and power, and would use only woody residues 
     as a feedstock. ``It's really frustrating,'' he said. 
     ``There's a tremendous deficit of trust that is really 
     inhibiting things.''
       In the United States, biomass power plants burn a variety 
     of feedstocks, including rice hulls in Louisiana and sugar 
     cane residues, called bagasse, in parts of Florida and 
     Hawaii. A vast majority, though, some 90 percent, use woody 
     residue as a feedstock, according to the Biomass Power 
     Association. About 75 percent of biomass electricity comes 
     from the paper and pulp companies, which collect their 
     residues and burn them to generate power for themselves.
       But more than 80 operations in 20 states are grid-connected 
     and generate power for sale to local utilities and 
     distribution to residential and commercial customers, a $1 
     billion industry, according to the association. The 
     increasing availability of subsidies and tax incentives has 
     put dozens of new projects in the development pipeline.
       The problem with all this biomass, critics argue, is that 
     wood can actually churn out more greenhouse gases than coal. 
     New trees might well cancel that out, but they do not grow 
     overnight. That means the low-carbon attributes of biomass 
     are often realized too slowly to be particularly useful for 
     combating climate change.
       Supporters of the technology say those limitations can be 
     overcome with tight regulation of what materials are burned 
     and how they are harvested. ``The key question is the rate of 
     use,'' said Ben Larson of the Union of Concerned Scientists, 
     an environmental group based in Cambridge, Mass., that 
     supports the sensible use of biomass power. ``We need to 
     consider which sources are used, and how the land is taken 
     care of over the long haul.''
       But critics maintain that ``sustainable'' biomass power is 
     an oxymoron, and that nowhere near enough residual material 
     exists to feed a large-scale industry. Plant owners, they 
     say, will inevitably be forced to seek out less beneficial 
     fuels, including whole trees harvested from tracts of land 
     that never would have been logged otherwise. Those trees, 
     critics say, would do far more to absorb planet-warming gases 
     if they were simply let alone.
       ``The fact is, you might get six or seven megawatts of 
     power from residues in Massachusetts,'' said Chris Matera, 
     the founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch. ``They're planning 
     on building about 200 megawatts. So it's a red herring. It's 
     not about burning waste wood. This is about burning trees.''
       Whether or not that is true, biomass power is also coming 
     under attack simply for the ordinary air pollution it 
     produces. Web sites like No Biomass Burn, based in the 
     Pacific Northwest, liken biomass emissions to cigarette 
     smoke. Duff Badgley, the coordinator of the site, says a 
     proposed plant in Mason County, Washington, would ``rain 
     toxic pollutants'' on residents there. And the American Lung 
     Association has asked Congress to exclude subsidies for 
     biomass from any new energy bill, citing potentially ``severe 
     impacts'' on health.
       Nathaniel Greene, the director of renewable energy policy 
     for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that while 
     such concerns were not unfounded, air pollution could be 
     controlled. ``It involves technology that we're really good 
     at,'' Mr. Greene said. For opponents like Mr. Matera, the 
     tradeoffs are not worth it.
       ``We've got huge problems,'' Mr. Matera said. ``And there's 
     no easy answer. But biomass doesn't do it. It's a false 
     solution that has enormous impacts.''
       Mr. Wolfe says that is shortsighted. Wind power and solar 
     power are not ready to scale up technologically and 
     economically, he

[[Page 11271]]

     said, particularly in this corner of Massachusetts. Biomass, 
     by contrast, is proven and available, and while it is far 
     from perfect, he argued, it can play a small part in reducing 
     reliance on fossil fuels.
       ``Is it carbon-neutral? Is it low-carbon? There's some 
     variety of opinion,'' Mr. Wolfe said. ``But that's missing 
     the forest for the trees. The question I ask is, What's the 
     alternative?''

  Mr. ALEXANDER. The above-referenced article is entitled ``Net 
Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny.'' It is about how the people 
of Massachusetts are starting to debate the idea that they are 
accomplishing anything by displacing coal with biomass to produce clean 
electricity. I am talking here about producing electricity, not 
biofuels which we use in our cars.
  Biomass is essentially burning wood and other organic products in a 
sort of controlled bonfire to produce electricity. The argument for 
biomass goes like this: Wood is natural. Trees regrow. Burn them up 
today and more trees will grow tomorrow. Therefore, we won't run out of 
resources. Moreover, trees are carbon neutral. Burning wood may release 
carbon dioxide, but trees reabsorb carbon so we can benefit from this 
natural cycle by generating electricity. Therefore, we are not making 
climate problems any worse with biomass.
  Indeed, biomass produces about 50 percent of our Nation's renewable 
electricity today, according to the New York Times, and by most of the 
definitions of renewable electricity that we use in proposals in the 
Senate. But we can't rely upon biomass to replace significant amounts 
of the fossil-based electricity we get today from coal. Biomass 
electricity has its place, and can be used to burn forest and other 
wood waste. In Tennessee we have a lot of pine trees. They need to be 
removed from the forest, and this is a good way to do that and make a 
little electricity. However, we cannot and we should not start cutting 
down and burning our forests to produce electricity. The loss of forest 
land is still one of the major ecological catastrophes in Africa, Asia, 
and South America. So are we, the most advanced country in the world, 
going to talk about going back to burning up our forests for energy? 
Many environmental advocates are now arguing that biomass should not 
even be considered to be ``renewable'' or ``carbon neutral'' because of 
the fact that burning wood releases greenhouse gases. While that is 
true, so does the natural process of decay, but the carbon is 
reabsorbed by the growth of new trees. Biomass can be, and should be, 
an important--albeit a small part--of our electricity portfolio by 
using excess forest material and industrial wood waste.
  Unfortunately, the New York Times piece misses out on one of the most 
important concerns about biomass. Just like other renewable electricity 
sources, it cannot be the solution for our clean energy needs because 
of the problem of scale. We would have to continually forest an area 
1\1/2\ times the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to 
replace the electricity created by two standard coal plants or one 
standard nuclear reactor. Wood has only half the energy density of 
coal. That means, if nothing else, we have to do twice as much work in 
hauling it around. There is a utility in Georgia that is using wood to 
replace coal in a 100-megawatt powerplant. This utility has trucks 
running in there day and night hauling wood to keep the plant running, 
and that is only 100 megawatts--about one-tenth the size of one nuclear 
reactor. For the southeastern United States to meet a 12-percent 
renewable electricity standard, as called for in the Waxman-Markey 
energy climate bill, by using biomass alone, we would have to cut down 
more trees than the entire U.S. paper industry uses each year.
  I think it is worth taking note of all this as we move toward the 
idea that renewable resources are the answer to our energy problems.
  Tomorrow, there will be a group of my colleagues going to the White 
House to discuss with the President the issue of how to proceed on 
clean energy. My fear is that we may all be asked to put our 
differences aside and settle this issue by pushing through a 
``renewable electricity standard'' that says all we have to do is 
choose a number--17 percent by 2020 or 25 percent by 2030--and before 
you know it, we will have all the energy we need from wind, the Sun, 
and from the Earth running our highly advanced technological country.
  In fact, more than half of the States already have adopted some 
version of these renewable electricity standards, but they haven't 
accomplished much. New Jersey wants to close down a nuclear reactor and 
replace it with an offshore wind farm. It will have to build 50-story 
wind turbines along its entire 125-mile coast, and it will still need 
to have the nuclear plant or a natural gas plant or coal plant or some 
other plant to provide electricity when the wind doesn't blow, which is 
most of the time.
  To meet its requirement of 33 percent renewable electricity by 2020, 
California has put up wind farms, developed its abundant geothermal 
resources, and siphoned methane from almost every landfill in the 
State, and it still only gets 12 percent of its electricity from 
renewables.
  Last year, a Wall Street Journal article cited the California State 
Energy Commission's warning that the renewable requirement could begin 
causing reliability problems--that means that when you turn your light 
switch on, the light might not go on--and increase electricity rates by 
2011, which is next year. California State agencies were warning that 
simply increasing the renewable requirement from 20 percent to 33 
percent could cost $114 billion.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the Wall Street Journal article from July 3, 2009.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009]

          State's Renewable-Energy Focus Risks Power Shortages

                           (By Rebecca Smith)

       California officials are beginning to worry that the 
     state's focus on transitioning to renewable-energy sources 
     could lead to power shortages in the near term.
       The state has been so keen to develop renewables that 
     relatively few conventional power generators, such as gas-
     fired plants, have been built lately. That risks a possible 
     energy shortfall in certain places if the economy rebounds 
     any time soon.
       California's utilities are barreling ahead to try to meet a 
     state mandate to garner 33% of their power from renewable 
     sources by 2020, and some officials are concerned the effort 
     might push up electricity prices and crimp supplies.
       The state auditor warned this week that the electricity 
     sector poses a ``high risk'' to the state economy. A staff 
     report from the state energy commission also warns that 
     California could find itself uncomfortably tight on power by 
     2011 if problems continue to pile up.
       Utilities complain that the ambitious renewable-energy 
     mandates, combined with tougher environmental regulations on 
     conventional plants, are compromising their ability to 
     deliver adequate power. ``Conflicting state policies are a 
     problem,'' said Stuart Hemphill, senior vice president of 
     procurement at Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison 
     International of Rosemead, Calif.
       The stresses being felt in California could be a harbinger 
     of problems to come in other states. The federal Waxman-
     Markey climate-change bill, passed by the House of 
     Representatives on June 26, would require states to obtain 
     about 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 
     2020. Currently, about 4% of U.S. electricity comes from 
     renewables, excluding hydropower.
       California's 33% renewable-energy target is so ambitious 
     that it is likely to miss the goal by five years or more, 
     energy officials now concur.
       State energy agencies recently concluded it could cost $114 
     billion or more to meet the 33% mandate, more than double 
     what it might have cost to achieve an earlier 20% 
     requirement. Consumers will bear those costs, one way or 
     another.
       Agencies also identified problems with constructing 
     sufficient transmission capacity to move renewable-based 
     energy to cities.
       Southern California Edison, which buys more renewable 
     electricity than any other U.S. utility, has conducted seven 
     solicitations for renewable-energy supplies since 2002 and 
     inked 48 renewable energy contracts. Yet it is still only 
     halfway toward its procurement goal. In 2008, 16% of its 
     electricity was renewable in origin, but more than 60% of 
     that came from geothermal

[[Page 11272]]

     plants--most of them built long before the current push for 
     green power.
       At the same time, new regulations are putting existing 
     power plants under pressure. Last week, the state Water 
     Resources Control Board issued a proposed policy that would 
     clamp down on power plants that use something called ``once-
     through cooling,'' which sucks water out of the ocean and 
     rivers and discharges massive amounts of warmed water, 
     harming some aquatic life.
       The policy would end the practice at 19 plants that produce 
     as much as 15% of the state's electricity. That has the 
     California Energy Commission worried electricity shortages 
     might arise if older, marginal plants are shut down before 
     there is replacement power available.
       Building conventional power units is notoriously tough in 
     Southern California because of air-quality problems and 
     difficulty getting air-emissions credits, which are 
     essentially rights to spew specified amounts of pollutants.
       Early this year, the local air agency, the South Coast Air 
     Quality Management District, imposed a moratorium on issuing 
     air credits from its ``bank'' that affected 10 power plants 
     that were under development.
       ``It's too early to tell how the pieces will fit together, 
     but all the agencies and utilities are talking,'' said 
     Edison's Mr. Hemphill. ``Something has to be worked out.''

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, countries such as Denmark and Germany 
have done the same thing. Denmark, which is often cited for its wind 
power, has pushed its windmills up to 20 percent of its electrical 
capacity. That sounds good. Many people regard 20 percent as about the 
theoretical limit that wind power can supply to a total electric grid, 
even for a small country such as Denmark. Yet Denmark hasn't closed 
even one single coal plant as a result of all these new windmills. So 
it is still dependent on fossil fuels, and it has the most expensive 
electricity in Europe because of all of its renewable electricity. 
Meanwhile, France, which has gone to 80 percent nuclear power, has per 
capita carbon emissions 30 percent lower than those of Denmark, and it 
has so much cheap electricity that France is making $3 billion a year 
exporting its electricity--mostly from nuclear power--to other 
countries.
  So what are we getting into when we say we are going to solve our 
energy problems by passing a law telling ourselves we have to get 15, 
17, or 20 percent of our electricity from renewable sources, very 
narrowly defined, by 2020?
  First, it is important to point out that 80 percent of the facilities 
built to satisfy State renewable standards have been windmills. So a 
renewable electricity standard is really a national windmill policy 
instead of a national energy policy. Wind turbines are easy to put up, 
especially in remote areas. We have built 35,000 megawatts in total 
wind energy capacity, which represents an increase of more than 100 
percent in the past 3 years. But most wind turbines only generate 
electricity about 33 percent of the time. That is how often the wind 
blows. The best wind farms--the ones on the eastern and west coast 
mountaintops or on the windy plains of the Dakotas--operate a little 
more than 40 percent of the time. That means our 35,000 megawatts in 
windmill capacity only generates about 10,000 megawatts at best--the 
equivalent of ten standard nuclear reactors.
  Moreover, the wind doesn't always blow when it is needed and often 
blows when it is not needed. The strongest winds are at night or during 
the fall and spring, which are periods of low demand, while the periods 
with the least wind are hot summer afternoons, when the electricity 
demand peaks. Wind and other renewables are not dependable in the terms 
that utilities need dependable electricity. The Tennessee Valley 
Authority, in the region where I live, says it can only count on the 
wind power it produces in Tennessee and even the wind power it buys 
from the Dakotas about 10 to 15 percent of the time when it is actually 
needed. That is also what has happened in Denmark. They have to give 
away almost half of their wind-generated electricity to Germany and 
Sweden at bargain prices because it comes at a time when it is not 
needed. The result has been that the Danes pay the highest electrical 
prices in Europe and still haven't achieved much reduction in carbon 
emissions.
  Then there is the matter of subsidies. We hear a lot about oil 
subsidies in the Senate. I suggest that when we talk about big oil, we 
also talk about big wind. The U.S. taxpayers are already committed to 
spending $29 billion over the next 10 years to subsidize the investors, 
corporations, and the banks that have financed the big wind turbines, 
and they only produce 1.8 percent of our electricity. If we went to 20 
percent of our electricity from wind in the United States, that would 
be $170 billion from American taxpayers.
  Windmills are and can be said to be a big success compared to solar 
electricity at today's prices. California now has more solar 
electricity than any other State, and in March, the California Public 
Utilities Commission announced the opening of one of the largest 
photovoltaic stations in California--21 megawatts. Solar power makes 
more sense as a supplement to our power by offsetting some of our 
demand by placing solar panels on rooftops, not large-scale electricity 
plants. We all hope we can reduce the cost of solar power, which today 
costs four times as much as electricity produced from coal.
  These are technologies we are counting on to solve our energy 
problems. I think we have to exercise some caution here. The assumption 
is that all we have to do is subsidize these technologies and get them 
up and running, and they will find their place in the market. That 
doesn't seem to be true. All of these technologies still have much to 
prove before they can shoulder a significant portion of our 
electricity. Biomass facilities need to be placed where they are most 
efficient and can be used as a supplement to low-cost reliable sources 
of electricity that already provide the large amounts of clean and 
reliable energy we need. We already have a proven technology in nuclear 
power that provides us with 20 percent of our electricity and 70 
percent of our carbon-free electricity. We should focus on that.
  As the President and our colleagues consider our clean energy future 
tomorrow and the things we agree on, we can agree to electrify half our 
cars and trucks, and we can agree to build nuclear plants for carbon-
free electricity. We can certainly agree on doubling energy research 
and development to bring down the cost of solar power by a factor of 4 
and to create a 500-mile battery for electric cars.
  But we need to remember, as we think about the next 10, 20, or 30 
years, the United States is not a desert island. We use 25 percent of 
all the energy in the world to produce about 25 percent of all the 
money, which we distribute among ourselves, 5 percent of the people in 
the world. We ought to keep that high standard of living. We need to 
remember we are not a desert island. Someday, solar, wind, and the 
Earth may be an important supplement to our energy needs, but for 
today, we are not going to power the United States on electricity 
produced by a windmill, a controlled bonfire, and a few solar panels.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Kansas is recognized.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague commenting 
about energy. There is a bipartisan energy bill that I hope the 
President discusses tomorrow. It came out of the Energy Committee on a 
bipartisan vote. It doesn't increase cap and trade.
  I certainly agree with my colleague on nuclear power, although we 
have some disagreement about wind. We have some nice places in Kansas 
for wind energy generation. I talked with the operators of the Smoky 
Hills Wind Farm last week. It operates between 40 and 45 percent of the 
time--the highest operating unit in the world. This company is a global 
wind-producing company. It is a very nice operation. I am not saying 
you can power it all off of wind. I am a nuclear supporter myself.
  I also believe we have nice places to do wind power and a nice 
generation capacity that is complementary to the rest of the energy 
grid in the United States. Kansas is the second windiest State in the 
country. There are many times I have been in Kansas and have wondered, 
who else could be windier? We have a lot of consistent wind. There are 
places we can produce wind power

[[Page 11273]]

on a very advantageous basis for the rest of the country. It is my hope 
that we can have those on a complementary basis but that we don't do a 
cap-and-trade system; rather, that we go with the bipartisan bill that 
passed the Energy Committee.

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