EPA Announces Biomass from Managed Forests Will Be Considered Carbon Neutral

April 24, 2018

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by Meghan Sapp (Biofuels Digest) In Georgia, in a meeting with members of the forestry community, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency announced the Agency issued a statement of policy making clear, that future regulatory actions on biomass from managed forests will be treated as carbon neutral when used for energy production at stationary sources. The Agency will also be assessing options for incorporating non-forest biomass as carbon neutral into future actions. READ MORE

Administrator Pruitt Promotes Environmental Stewardship with Forestry Leaders and Students in Georgia (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

EPA's Treatment of Biogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Stationary Sources that Use Forest Biomass for Energy Production (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

The Energy 202: Why Scott Pruitt's decision on burning wood is so high stakes (The Washington Post)

Scott Pruitt wades into a fraught science debate, declaring biomass burning ‘carbon neutral’ (The Washington Post)

EPA: Biomass from managed forests is carbon neutral (Biomass Magazine)

Pruitt declares that burning wood is carbon neutral (The Hill)

EPA Falsely Deems Wood Burning for Electricity “Carbon Neutral” (Union of Concerned Scientists)

EPA Declares Biomass Carbon Neutral—Biomass, Forestry Industries Quietly Paved the Way (Environmental and Energy Study Institute)

Billions of Gallons of Water Saved by Thinning Sierra Forests (University of California Merced)

The EPA says burning wood to generate power is ‘carbon-neutral.’ Is that true? (The Conversation)

EPA Acting Administrator Wheeler, USDA Secretary Perdue, and DOE Secretary Perry Send Letter to Congress on Biomass Carbon Neutrality -- Managed Forests Can Bolster Domestic Energy Production (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

Concerns over EU plans to minimise use of ‘whole trees’ in bioenergy production (Bioenergy Insight)

Excerpt from The Washington Post: The contention that burning wood for energy is carbon neutral rests on the idea that trees remove carbon from the air as they grow. Therefore, while burning trees releases carbon dioxide emissions, carbon will be pulled out again if the trees grow back. This suggests that burning trees or wood chips can be considered a renewable and sustainable energy source.

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The EPA’s Science Advisory Board had not completed deliberations on the matter, and the agency’s policy memo released Monday acknowledged that the board had determined in 2012 that “it is not scientifically valid to assume that all biogenic feedstocks are carbon neutral” but that any such determination required further analysis.

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Some forest scientists, however, support the idea that biomass is carbon neutral. More than 100 of them signed a letter to the EPA in 2016 to make that case.

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European Union policymakers have declared wood energy to be carbon neutral. The loophole has led to a flourishing trade in which North American trees are chopped down, compressed into pellets and shipped to Europe to be burned. READ MORE

Excerpt from Environmental and Energy Study Institute: A back and forth on the question of biomass utilization and carbon has been going on nearly a decade at the agency. In 2011, EPA tasked the independent Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) with finalizing key concepts for emissions associated with the use of biomass feedstocks to produce electricity (including wastes from forestry, agriculture, organics, manure, landfills, and waste water treatment plants). The SAB's concept for the Framework was to establish a factor for carbon emissions associated with the entire lifecycle of biomass feedstocks, including the growth, harvest, and processing of the biomass. While the media and public’s attention has focused on the use of woody biomass (small trees, wood chips, wood wastes etc.), the decision would have potentially affect the entire biomass supply chain.

However, since the waning days of the Obama administration, the issue of biomass carbon has been at an impasse at the EPA, with the EPA independent Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) coming to a loggerhead on the issue at meetings in both 2016 and 2017 on this issue. With Pruitt pulling back on the time-tested approach of using independent scientists to weigh in on complicated issues across the agency, the SAB has become, unfortunately, increasingly irrelevant at Pruitt’s EPA.

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Early into the Trump presidency, when the administration put forth a call for industries to submit their ideas of burdensome regulations to dismantle, the forest and biomass industries responded with – fix the uncertainty around the treatment of forest biomass at EPA.

Prior to this, industry groups worked with lawmakers from forestry-dominant states to push for harmonization of federal policy on biomass. To that end, Senator Collins (R-ME) first introduced such legislation in 2017, which was later incorporated into 2017 appropriations language and then again in the 2018 appropriations bill. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 calls for EPA, the Department of Energy and USDA to harmonize policies on biomass, calling for policies that “reflect the carbon-neutrality of forest bioenergy and recognize biomass as a renewable energy source, provided that the use of forest biomass for energy production does not cause conversion of forests to non-forest uses.”

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Solutions from the Land, an agriculture, forestry and conservation group, cheered the decision but note that there are numerous conflicts in no fewer than 14 different federal regulations pertaining to biomass utilization.

State level policies, to a large extent, decide the level of biomass utilization domestically. For example, Massachusetts’ Renewable Portfolio Standard largely forbids the use of biomass as renewable energy, while Oregon promotes it as a renewable source of energy. In California, the biomass power industry has largely shut-down due to expiring Power Purchase Agreements, despite a great need to address vast amounts of wildfire and agricultural wastes. Currently, the only other method of disposal of these materials is open burning.

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According to Wanda Barrs, a Georgia forest owner who hosted Pruitt for the recent announcement, “Our forests clean the air we breathe, filter the water we drink, provide healthy homes for all kinds of wildlife, and create jobs for people within our communities … However, we can’t keep our forests just because we love all they provide. Like any other sustainable business, the forests we manage, which benefit everyone, must provide a competitive economic return.”

For additional background information on this issue, check out EESI articles related to this issue:

2017: Despite Biomass Provisions in Omnibus, Biomass Woes Far From Over
2016: Biomass Provision in Bipartisan Energy Bill Touches Environmental Flash Point
2014: EPA’s Biogenic Carbon Rules Positive, but Not Out of the Woods Yet

For more information see: