DARTMOUTH'S PLANNED BIOMASS PLANT WOULD ONLY MAKE THINGS WORSE

Dartmouth’s planned biomass plant would only make things worse

https://www.vnews.com/Column-Burning-Forests-for-Heat-at-Dartmouth-...

 

GEORGE M. WOODWELL, WILLIAM SCHLESINGER and JOHN D. STERMAN

We are three Dartmouth College alumni who have led major scientific programs and research institutions dealing in part with forests as cause and cure of climatic disruption.

We have also been involved for decades in evaluating alternatives to fossil fuels in domestic and institutional settings.

 

We have read with interest, and no little alarm, that Dartmouth intends to replace its oil-fired steam heating system with a $200 million wood-burning heating plant, nominally in the interest of reducing institutional carbon emissions.

 

While it is commendable to find ways to reduce the college’s dependence on fossil fuels, the important goal is to reduce Dartmouth’s net carbon dioxide emissions.

 

Shifting from steam to hot water will provide a modest saving in the need for primary heat. However, shifting from heating oil to wood to supply that energy will increase the college’s carbon emissions substantially, worsening global warming and climatic disruption at a time when dramatic emissions reductions are urgently needed to limit climate change.

 

The problems are several.

 

First, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and many peer-reviewed studies show that wood generates significantly more CO2 than the fuel oil it would replace, and even more than the natural gas used by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

 

The carbon content of wood is about 30% higher per unit of primary energy than fuel oil and about 80% higher than natural gas.

 

Second, the combustion efficiency of wood is less than that of modern oil and gas systems.

 

Third, the wood supply chain requires substantial energy for harvest, transport, processing and drying prior to use, and for ash disposal.

 

Therefore, the first impact of switching from oil to wood will be an increase in Dartmouth’s carbon dioxide emissions, worsening climate change.

 

Of course, over time, the forests harvested to supply that wood may grow back, gradually removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

 

That is the great hope underlying the use of bioenergy. However, and crucially, regrowth takes time and is not certain.

 

In the northern forests that would supply the proposed plant, the time required to remove the excess CO2 emitted from burning wood instead of oil is many decades at least, and possibly more than a century.

 

This is true even under the optimistic assumptions that the harvested lands will remain forest and will not be converted to pasture, cropland or development, and that the new growth in those forests will not suffer die-off from disease and insect damage or burn in wildfire — all more likely as the world warms.

 

These dynamics mean that switching from oil to wood will worsen Dartmouth’s contribution to climate change for decades, even as the IPCC and scientists around the world agree that global emissions must fall dramatically by 2030, and essentially to zero by mid-century.

 

The college says only “waste wood” that would normally decay will be used, but it is difficult to verify that all such fuel is waste wood.

 

And removal of wood, “waste” or not, deprives forests of the nutrients needed to ensure vigorous replacement growth. Northern New Hampshire, where a number of wood-burning power plants are located, has a much-depleted forest in terms of carbon stocks compared with forests in the southern part of the state.

 

Burning wood generates a variety of public health harms beyond its harm to the climate. Wood smoke contains dangerous particulates. Many regions have restricted wood burning for this reason. Winter temperature inversions in the Connecticut River Valley capture fireplace and wood stove smoke now. A large wood-burning heating plant would impose an additional burden on residents.

 

We urge the college to avoid making a heavy investment in a mistaken assumption that a wood-fired heating plant will benefit the college or the world.

 

Instead, we urge a major effort in improving energy efficiency for the college’s facilities.

 

Efficiency is the fastest, cheapest and safest way to meet the need for warm buildings in winter and cool ones in summer. The increase in up-front capital costs of highly efficient buildings, both new construction and retrofits, is very low (from roughly zero to a few percent), while their operating costs are far lower, often generating positive net present value while imposing little burden on cash flow.

 

Simultaneously, we urge a careful look at potential local solutions for heating and cooling, including air- and ground-source heat pump systems, powered by renewable energy from local sources, including solar, wind and water.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: 

George M. Woodwell, Dartmouth Class of 1950, is the president emeritus and founder of the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass.

 

William Schlesinger, Dartmouth ’72, is the James B. Duke, Professor of Biogeochemistry and dean (emeritus) at Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.

 

John D. Sterman, Dartmouth ’77, is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

 

 

 

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Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on August 14, 2019 at 1:01pm

Burning forests to generate electricity is probably the worst green energy stupidity.  It destroys forests; creates its own pollutants; is less efficient than coal to harvest, handle, and burn; and has a low heat value.  If all factors are counted, it will take decades of forest regrowth to match the CO2 emissions of burning high-energy coal.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/biofuels_baloney.html

 

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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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