[Gasification] Emissions fines

Tom Miles tmiles at trmiles.com
Sun Feb 20 12:13:23 CST 2011


Alex,

Turning off the sound on TV to listen to a biomass debate shows real
dedication.

It's not getting any easier. We don't trust regulators to act for us and we
can't make a decision so we ask for more information. Unfortunately more
information just makes the decision harder. That's probably why there are
time limits on comment periods for land use hearings.

At a land use hearing last year vocal members in a small rural community
(population 1400) complained about all the horrible consequences of a
proposed biomass plant. Now that the plant has been operating for a few
months few local people I ask realize that the plant was actually built and
is running. I guess you wouldn't know it was running unless your wife's boy
friend worked there. Then you would hear about it.

In another location we were told that due to land use issues it would take
three years to permit a small boiler in an existing sawmill. The small
sawmill has been in the rural area for more than 30 years. The opposition
comes mostly from a lawyer who bought a house nearby for his son about five
year ago. He knows how to hold up the process.     

In California last week I was surprised to find several people who didn't
know about the biomass plants operating just a few miles away. The plant
have each been processing 1000-2000 tons of urban wood waste, forest
residues and agricultural prunings daily for 25-30 years. Yet if you
proposed a new one it would bring out the complaints. Some of my clients
receive complaints about noise, dust or pollution on days when their plant
is not operating. (I live near a dirty, dusty, noisy freeway but when I
complain nobody listens, so I just bark at the moon.)

It's a credit to Thurston County that they put the information on the web.
Many former timber or agricultural communities in Washington are considering
using biomass to heat campuses and generate power. In many of these
communities the population has changed such that urban intellectuals are
trying to make considered decisions about activities they simply do not
understand. If we could just make biomass so that it was like natural gas.
Gasification? What a concept!

Tom             

 




 
-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Alex
English
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2011 7:20 AM
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
Subject: Re: [Gasification] Emissions fines

Tom,

I spent some time with the Thurston County Moratorium link. I waded 
through the presentations then  turned of the tv sound on Hockey Fight 
in Canada and listened to the audio from the very civil public hearings 
on the moratorium. There was a comment that the ratio of those 
for-and-against the moratorium on "biomass" was  about 70-1. That sound 
about right. Non loggers and farmers to loggers and farmers. Can't do 
math to those who can. Uninformed to informed.

  How unfair, simplistic and cynical of me. I love trees and clean low 
CO2 air too.

Perhaps they know at a deeper level that as a fossil/nuke society we are 
sinners and bioenergy talk is just a weak kneed genuflect towards the 
cross of sustainability and then back to work. We are going to heat our 
bricks and mortar,( or plastic tunnels :) one way or another, no 
sweaters required.

To be fairer, many just thought the issue was complex and needed the 
extra time for more analysis. They quoted the Mass study on the biomass 
CO2  pulse, the lower efficiencies of electrical power generation from 
biomass, the concerns about PM 2.5, problems with dust at McNeil in 
Vermont, diesel truck emissions, and on. There are thoughtful responses 
to all points but inevitably they entail a cost/benefit analysis that 
provides fuel to both sides of the debate.

Can we successfully weigh distant benefits with local costs? Is there 
any real way to weigh the raising one pollutant level against the 
lowering of another?

It isn't getting any easier is it?

Alex





.
On 2/19/2011 12:48 PM, Tom Miles wrote:

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