It Isn’t Easy Being Green: Biomass, Sustainable Energy, and the Year 2020
“The Evergreen State College will be a laboratory for sustainability as demonstrated in our operations, curriculum, and quality of life for employees and students. We will nurture values and practical skills that motivate a lifetime commitment to a sustainable, intergenerationally just way of living on a healthy planet.”
—Evergreen’s Vision for a Sustainable Future, available at the college’s website: http://www.evergreen.edu/sustainability/home.htm
While residents of the Gulf Coast face the aftermath of yet another ecological disaster, the people of Pakistan demand more aid after unprecedented flooding, and people organize against a biomass incinerator proposed for Shelton, members of the Evergreen and Olympia community wrestle with solutions to climate change. You may ask: What do these things have to do with a biomass facility at Evergreen? A great deal. Shelton is the poorer, rural community next door, without a college or the state capitol to buoy its economy. Why does the larger, dirtier biomass incinerator get built there? The same questions can be asked of the situations in the Gulf and Pakistan. Would Obama have squatted on a beach in Martha’s Vineyard shaking his head as oil crept up the sand? Would people in Palm Beach have had to wait, knee-deep in the debris of their flooded homes, for enough aid to reach them?
Maybe it’s easier to rescue Martha’s Vineyard and Palm Beach for reasons purely practical, like terrain and accessibility. Unfortunately, there are no simple answers in the world of global capitalism. Iraq and Afghanistan contain seemingly inaccessible terrain, but the “war on terror” finds a way. So what makes the revival of the Gulf and aid for Pakistan such a challenge for the advanced capitalist world? Maybe for the same reasons it isn’t easy being “green” at Evergreen.
The struggle over a proposed biomass gasification facility, intended to reduce the college’s dependence on natural gas, highlights the complexities of putting visions of sustainability into practice.
The story of Evergreen’s biomass facility begins with gasification technology, discovered in the nineteenth century. Simply put, material is heated in an oxygen-deprived environment to prevent combustion, which produces a gas that can be burned to produce energy. Unlike a direct burn, gasification creates what’s called a synthesis gas or “syn-gas” from carbonaceous material. This syn-gas is burned directly or liquefied for future burning, to generate heat or electricity.
The by-product, called “char,” is a soil supplement according to Evergreen’s website. The technology was first applied to streetlamps fueled by coal. Wood gasification was developed during WWII, when Finland and Denmark were cut off from their external oil supplies and they turned to their forests for fuel.
Though biomass gasifiers can be fueled by bamboo, other grasses, and municipal waste (trash), proponents of Evergreen’s biomass project plan to utilize local wood. For reasons of climate and land availability, fuel sources such as bamboo or another grass wouldn’t work for Evergreen. Morgan’s research leads him to believe that if the college’s project can utilize a waste stream, the model will work, that is, be carbon neutral and save money on energy. If you have to grow your own fuel, such as bamboo or other grasses, “it’s kind of a wash,” Morgan explains. For Evergreen’s calculations to work out, especially concerning carbon neutrality, the wood has to be “slash,” or leftovers, from a local, sustainable forestry operation. But opponents of the project claim these calculations are flawed, saying there is no such local, sustainable source of waste wood for the plant.
Matt Pfeiffer is a student and member of Olympia Rising Tide, a chapter of Rising Tide North America, “a grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change and promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis.” (www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/what-is-rising-tide/) According to Pfeiffer, “A lot of homage is paid to the fact that this will all be waste wood but there is really good evidence that says there is not enough waste wood within the timber industry to supply the biomass incinerator.” Pat Rasmussen, an Olympia activist with World Temperate Rainforest Network, a group of First Nations, organizations, individuals and scientists, “who care about the future of temperate rainforests and those who live within them.” (www.temperaterainforests.org/about.htm) agrees. She cites eleven biomass incinerators in various stages of permitting that propose to use forest resources (trees) from the Olympic Peninsula, which amounts to 2.75 million tons of woodchips per year. (Based on a map compiled by PT Airwatchers in Port Townsend: http://ptairwatchers.spruz.com).
Pfeiffer sees the construction of biomass facilities as a trend in false solutions to climate change proposed by the logging and energy industries. He sees the current boom in incinerator construction as a push by these industries to replace coal. “A lot of coal plants have started co-firing wood chips with coal because you don’t need a major alteration to the plant,” he explains. Pfeiffer and the other members of Rising Tide label biomass “greenwashing” because it is “a really easy solution for the fossil fuel industry, which can say: ‘this is renewable,’ and ‘this gets us away from foreign oil.’ This is pretty deceitful, since cutting at the rate we are now, it’s not renewable and we’re decimating our forests.” The most immediate example of this trend is the biomass incinerator being contested in Shelton. Olympia Rising Tide has been building alliances with organizers there, together turning out 75 people for a protest at the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency (ORCAA) in Olympia in early September.
Pfeiffer calls the biomass project an “incinerator,” rather than gasifier, because companies who build these facilities “will always fight the language of incinerator, because incinerator sounds bad. Incinerators combust material to generate heat or energy. A gasification facility does that in a particular way.” This, in Pfeiffer’s estimation, makes incinerators and gasifiers equally damaging to the environment. College engineer Rich Davis says that “incinerator” connotes eliminating waste, not producing heat. “I have objected to the characterization of slash as waste and describing the Evergreen project as an incinerator because it is an opportunity to elicit an emotional response from those not familiar with combustion technologies.” The differences and similarities between Evergreen’s project and the facility in Shelton are major points of contention.
Masters in Environmental Science (MES) faculty member Kathleen Saul recently worked on a case study of biomass technology for the Native Cases Institute and is involved in researching biomass at Evergreen. She emphasized the difference between Evergreen’s project and the one in Shelton. “I wanted to point out that the project going on in Shelton is going to burn wood products, but they’re not creating a fuel. It’s a really different beast, so I want people to separate the two in their minds. They’re different processes, the end results are different, and people are getting them confused.” With the struggle in Shelton ongoing, proponents of the Evergreen plant are hard-pressed to paint a positive picture. The alleged differences aren’t enough for Rasmussen, who makes clear, “Biomass burning is not carbon neutral, whether in a gasification unit or mass burner.” She references the “assumption” that biomass was carbon neutral, discredited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who agreed to no longer exempt reporting of CO2 emissions from biomass plants in May 2010.
Evergreen’s research team maintains that their project can be carbon neutral and Rich Davis claims to be taking the allegation of “greenwashing” seriously. “I think people have realized that to make this project go through, it has to be green,” he explains. “We can’t lie about being green. And I think there’s more and more support for that.” Whether the proposed biomass gasification plant is another “greenwashed” solution of the logging and energy industries or a move towards carbon neutrality has depends your framework according to Kathleen Saul. “[Carbon neutrality] depends on where you draw your box and what you consider your boundaries. If you just think of Evergreen and we’re burning wood from outside, we’re doing great because we’re not cutting down anything. Are we going to be naïve and just look at the campus? I don’t think we should. I think we need to look at the whole picture.” Major questions about that picture, according to both opponents and advocates, are where the wood comes from and how those forests are managed.
These crucial questions are unanswered. Debate continues, within the research group and in the community, over how to define “sustainable forestry.” According to Dani Madrone, coordinator of the Clean Energy Committee (CEC) and Student Sustainability Coordinator, the uncertainties of forestry certification complicate the issue. “The most recent certification Evergreen has been looking into is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
There are concerns about the FSC internationally. When you have an international certification, that’s going to happen. Industry gets in there.” As analogy, she compares this to the USDA’s organic certification.
“At the farmer’s market you can find local, family-owned farms and you can go to their land to see how their food is grown. They’re USDA certified organic. Coca-Cola also has USDA certified organic products, but you can’t track down where their ingredients come from, they’re distributed all over the world. Here you have a certification that certifies both ends of the spectrum, but the difference is I can go to the farm and see for myself that the practices are good.”
Whether forestry practices are “good” or not is beside the point in the mind of Rasmussen. In opposition to biomass at Evergreen and in Shelton, Rasmussen emphasizes the critical role Pacific Northwest forests play in carbon sequestration and how that role will be affected by biomass facilities. “The temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest have higher carbon densities than any other type of forest, anywhere in the world. Conserving these forests for the carbon they hold and will sequester in coming years is a real solution to climate change. Since deforestation causes 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding deforestation is a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and has the potential to offer significant reductions fairly quickly – no new technology has to be developed.” Rasmussen bases these claims on the findings of the Washington
State Department of Ecology. ()
Despite the unanswered questions about carbon neutrality and sustainable forestry, Morgan is optimistic about the project. “The exciting thing is biomass gasification is a shift in the energy model; a shift away from extractive forms of energy. Right now our energy is extracted in Wyoming, British Colombia and Alberta and we’ve got no connection with those people. And in Wyoming there are some serious impacts now from the extraction processes. We have no connection with that. Biomass gasification is the kind of model where we can get our energy from someone down the road.” So who will that “someone down the road” be?
Madrone views the biomass project as one that “can support local, non-corporate landowners who are practicing sustainable forestry.” She and Morgan both mentioned supporting the local economy and Morgan elaborated. “We’ve had some really good conversations with the Northwest Natural Resource Group and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) who are really excited about this because they see a lot of small landowners in the forest business right now who are failing and their communities are failing, and they have nothing to turn to.” In Morgan’s mind, these “small landowners” would be the people supplying fuel for a new energy model at Evergreen. But the debate over sustainable forestry goes on and its outcome could define the college’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2020.
What would it mean to be carbon neutral? According to Matt Pfeiffer, “Carbon neutral is not emitting any carbon, as opposed to carbon positive, which would mean you’re absorbing more carbon than you emit. For example, solar panels and wind turbines. Other than the start-up costs needed to build them and basic maintenance, they are carbon neutral.” He’s critical of biomass gasification as a way to reach this goal, citing scientists who question the claim that biomass is carbon neutral.
Quoted in Rising Tide literature, William Sammons, MD and pediatrician in Massachusetts, opposes biomass facilities from Florida to Indiana. Sammons says biomass is not carbon neutral because “burning releases carbon dioxide (CO2) in minutes but the CO2 won’t be re-sequestered for centuries. Burning biomass will accelerate climate change, not help,” according to a handout from Rising Tide. Proponents of the project maintain they can make biomass carbon neutral through sustainable forestry.
“I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent trying to figure out where the fuel supply needs to come from to be green,” Rich Davis said. He explains that people claimed calculating carbon neutrality was complicated, based on the time of harvest and carbon sequestration rates over time. But he has come to a decision of his own. “I finally came to the conclusion: it doesn’t matter. If we burn fuel from a sustainable forest and the growth rate exceeds the harvest rate, it’s sustainable. It’s the carbon cycle: we’re putting carbon back at the rate we’re using it.” This is the logic that Rasmussen and Pfeiffer see as intrinsically flawed. But Washington State Law supports this understanding of the carbon cycle, saying biomass emissions in the form of “fuel wood, wood waste, wood by-products, and wood residuals,” are not considered greenhouse gases “as long as the region’s sequestration capacity is maintained or increased.” (http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=70.235.020)
Based on Pfeiffer’s research, Evergreen staff are actively supporting future laws, such as House Bill 2481 (HB 2481) (http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?year=2009&bill=2481), that would enable the biomass project. The bill would, among other things, enable the DNR to enter 15 year contracts with operators of biomass projects costing at least 50 million dollars as well as maintain access to wood for existing biomass facilities when it deems necessary. “Evergreen staff have done a number of things that make it clear they’re very intent on this project,” says Pfeiffer. “One is testifying to the Senate Ways and Means Committee about DNR regulations that support biomass.” He went on to quote the college’s statement. “Evergreen believes that the passage of House Bill 2481 would provide the DNR with tools necessary to become a major player in the biomass industry and potential partner with Evergreen as we move forward to construct our biomass gasification project.” (http://blogs.evergreen.edu/officeofgovernmentalrelations/2010/02/27/sena...)
Rich Davis says Evergreen needs to do more than meet regulations to make the project work. “If we just take the federal view: all slash is renewable, and we put it in our process, I think we’re subject to criticism. And I don’t like that. I want the folks in the middle who are asking questions and thinking to support what we do.” He says opposition to the project has honed the group’s commitment to sustainable forestry. “The criticism that’s occurred has sharpened us. It’s made arguments about where this fuel comes from stronger and clearer.” Not only that, but “it’s brought more people in line with the idea that the source of fuel is important.” Dani Madrone still questions the carbon neutrality of biomass, while affirming Evergreen’s commitment to sustainability.
“I can’t say, yes, it will be carbon neutral because I’m still learning the science,” says Madrone. “But it’s very clear that Evergreen does not support clearcutting.” Clearcutting is the procees of cutting all the trees in an area every given number of years, then replanting to start the process over. In the case of Green Diamond Resource Company, a lumber corporation that lauds itself as “green,” this practice is called “even-aged management.” Madrone goes on to describe “conversion,” a process she claims is worse than clearcutting. “This is when someone who owns land for forestry can’t make the money off the land that they need to, so they cut down all of the trees and sell the land for development. That’s a much bigger contributor to climate change than clearcutting in the grand scheme of things,” she says. Criticism of clearcutting and conversion are not new at Evergreen and neither is biomass.
In 2008, Nexterra, a company that builds biomass gasifiers, brought a proposal to Evergreen. The proposal was dismissed because, according to Scott Morgan, “no one wanted to open that discussion on campus.” Geothermal heat pumps, or ground source heat pumps, were studied as an alternative. Ground source heat pumps draw heat from the ground using electrically powered machinery. According to both Morgan and Rich Davis, the college can’t afford them. But Pat Rasmussen, citing a paper on energy options for the college, says biomass and heat pumps are comparable in cost: between $15 – 23 million for ground source compared to approximately $15 million for biomass. Rasmussen also cited data from Ball State University, which claims the pumps can pay for themselves in two to ten years. (http://cms.bsu.edu/About/Geothermal.aspx) Rasmussen is talking about closed loop, or VRF, pumps, which she claims would cost only $8-9 million to install at Evergreen. According to Rasmussen, closed-loop pumps have not been studied by Evergreen. Paul Smith, Evergreen’s facilities director, only discussed a different kind of technology, open-loop geothermal, at the most recent information session on September 23, she says. Ground source heat pumps do rely on electricity for power, which Rasmussen says can be renewable and lead to carbon neutrality. But Evergreen staff are skeptical.
Rich Davis explained Evergreen’s position on the cost of ground source. Instead of two to ten years, his calculations say it would take the college 50 years to recuperate the money spent installing the pumps through energy savings. Because of dependence on electricity, Davis also doubts the potential for ground source to lead to carbon neutrality or savings on energy bills. “With ground source heat pumps,” continues Davis, “we’re one hundred percent electrical and our electricity bill goes through the roof.”
Other alternatives have been researched, including plasma gasification and anaerobic digestion. The first, like ground source, is dependent on electricity and the primary fuel is municipal waste, which can give off toxins such as heavy metals, mercury, and dioxins. The second amounts to capturing and burning methane, the primary component of natural gas, from landfills, sewage treatment plants, or manure. As Morgan explains it, “we could set up a compost pile or we have to haul in sludge of some kind.” He also says anaerobic digestion can’t be accelerated and decelerated as needed, which is a criteria for the college’s heat source.
But Pfeiffer and Rising Tide want more resources put into researching alternatives. They feel that, despite using student fees on the feasibility study, the project’s proponents have presented students with the “false dichotomy,” of “choosing between fossil fuels and our forests.” They say this is part of the administration’s position that, “if we’re against biomass, we’re for fossil fuels.” Pfeiffer rejoinders, “A fundamental demand of the climate justice movement has always been leave fossil fuels in the ground.But if we’re left with the choice between fossil fuels and our forests, it’s one form of destructive for another. And we’re not going to have a future if we have to choose one of those.”
According to Pfeiffer, not enough is being done to incorporate students or community members into the project, especially by means of outreach, education, and debate. Pfeiffer initially heard about the project from activists elsewhere in Washington opposing similar facilities. From meeting minutes available online (http://www.evergreen.edu/committee/cleanenergy/minutes.htm), we can make a rough timeline of events since the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.
In fall of 2009 the CEC got a proposal from Paul Smith, Evergreen’s Facilities Director, to fund one third of the cost of a feasibility study for biomass, which would mean 125,000 dollars from the student Clean Energy Fee. “We knew it was going to be controversial because we’re dealing with trees, and there are a lot of environmental justice issues involved, especially deforestation, one of the major contributors to climate change,” Madrone explained. The Committee held a student forum before coming to a decision. Madrone said the forum, which took place in October 2009, only drew two students. One of them asked the soon to be familiar question, “where is the wood going to come from?”
On October 16, the Committee decided to fund the study. This meant a total of 375,000 dollars would go to the study, one third from the student fee, one third from the college’s reserves, and one third from the legislature. A portion of this money is paying for a third party feasibility study being conducted by a company called McKinstry, due out sometime between now and December. After the decision, students were invited to come to the CEC with questions, and they did, reiterating concerns about the source of the fuel and raising questions about emissions from the proposed facility.
Though Madrone stressed “transparency with students so that their voices are heard,” Matt Pfeiffer isn’t convinced the process has been or will be democratic. Over the summer, communication about the project seemed to break down. “I was told by some other activists there was going to be a private meeting on July 16, which I and other activists attended. Many administrators were disgruntled by our presence, but we sat in on the meeting and aired our concerns. All the meetings since then have been kept well enough under wraps that we didn’t even hear about them even though we were told we’d be kept informed.”
Madrone, who is focusing her energies on community outreach, cites a serious need for more help. “With the way the economy’s been going, more and more of the responsibilities get dumped on the same people because Evergreen can’t afford to hire new employees. One of the big problems with the research is everybody’s busy.” Scott Morgan, leading the project as the college’s Sustainability Director, is researching alternatives on his own and he is part time. “I seriously want some students engaged with researching alternatives this fall,” he says.
Morgan was specific about the kind of engagement he’s looking for. “My responsibility here is to make sure we are able to make a completely informed decision and we can’t do that without including the opposing voices. I want them to engage with some of the discussion groups and get involved in the research.” He proposed a schedule of two to four information sessions before the end of the quarter, spread out over the course of three months. Madrone sees her role as “generating a community-based learning experience, where we present what we’ve learned about forestry, and ask what have you heard? We want to pull knowledge out of the community, pull people’s concerns out, so we can address them along the way, rather than going ahead with our research and later finding out that we should’ve looked at this or that.” Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to write contracts or develop class projects based on biomass. The debates, research, and unfortunately, environmental destruction continue, but this project, like any alternative form of energy, requires participation not just of college staff, but, as Evergreen’s website states, “the entire community.”
But who belongs to that community? According to Kathleen Saul, there’s definitely a need for outreach regarding this project’s relationship to indigenous communities. “Especially in Washington,” she explains, “where there are so many tribes and they’re active on environmental issues. Not just because we have treaties with the tribes, but because they have some great scientists and it behooves us to draw on their expertise.” This is also “an energy model that a lot of indigenous communities are using or looking into around the country,” says Morgan. Unless indigenous communities are directly engaged in the project, race and class disparities in energy production and distribution, stressed by Pfeiffer and Rising Tide, may fetter any strides towards sustainability.
Despite these concerns, Rich Davis sees biomass as a means to better the already encouraging history of sustainability at Evergreen. “So, when our critics say, Evergreen, you should conserve to become carbon neutral. I say, we have. We’re working on that all the time, we’re below average, we’re outside the box, we’re innovative in a lot of things we’re doing now. There’s more to do and I want to go further.” It’s going to take more than conservation, according to Davis, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020. “Conservation’s not going to make us ‘green’ or carbon neutral by 2020. Biomass can do that.” Not according to Pfeiffer. “Biomass is capital’s answer to the climate crisis. If Evergreen certifies biomass, with it’s significant influence as a green institution, then we’re saying this is something everyone should do.” His conclusion is grim. “We are opening up a new way of ‘green’ eco-apartheid by endorsing this new trend of biomass incinerators.”
Scott Morgan concludes by addressing the project in the context of energy production. “We need to stop assuming that a centralized power production and distributed infrastructure model is the only one that works. “It may or may not work for biomass,” he says, “but we need a better sense of where our energy comes from, how it’s managed and a lot more responsibility for it.”
The struggle over the biomass project demonstrates that addressing ecological devastation is not only about how Evergreen produces and uses energy, but who decides and what makes it possible. We remain fettered by the destructive, racist, and capitalist logic operating on a global scale, producing travesties in the Gulf and Pakistan. Biomass may be able to loosen certain of those fetters, by making our heat local and potentially renewable, providing economic options for communities without them, and making us more aware of the resources we consume. Yet it is still bounded by disconcerting limitations, such as appeasing industry’s insatiable hunger for “green” markets, an uncertain science of carbon sequestration, and, in the case of Evergreen’s project, lack of participation from directly affected communities, particularly indigenous communities. Only more widespread education, participation, and debate in the struggle over biomass can resolve these questions and raise those yet unasked.