RCEA should reconsider biomass contract
The Humboldt Coalition for Clean Energy is a coalition of 16 local groups who want RCEA to drop biomass and keep its promise to provide 100% clean electricity by 2025. With California falling far short of its 2030 climate goals and five major planetary tipping points approaching in the next decade, the slow rate at which forests recoup carbon makes incinerating mill waste a climate problem, not a solution. It is a travesty that 40% of RCEA's renewable portfolio comes from a power plant that emits more carbon per megawatt hour than coal and as much greenhouse gas as 88% of Humboldt's cars.
All that carbon comes with a hefty side of pollution. Biomass plants in general emit more carbon, air toxics and particulates than coal. The 38-year-old Scotia plant is an outlier, emitting 50% more carbon, 200% more fine particulates and nitrogen oxides, and 500% more air toxics than its peers. The plant has committed thousands of violations of the Clean Air and Water Acts over the past decade, many while under contract with RCEA.
RCEA's promise not to do business with environmental lawbreakers, displayed on their website and enshrined in the biomass contract, provides the means to end the contract in 2025 instead of 2031 and shift millions of dollars to clean energy. Instead RCEA is dead set on keeping biomass.
When our coalition asked to speak to the RCEA Community Advisory Committee about ending the contract, RCEA staff tried to drown out our message by loading the agenda with pro biomass speakers and allowing us just 8 minutes to make our case. RCEA invited the Ag Extension Forestry Advisor who claimed that ending the RCEA contract would shut down the biomass plant and cause wildfires even though most of its fuel is mill waste and illegal to pile burn, and less than 4% is from forest fuel reduction. If RCEA terminated its biomass contract in 2025, the plant would not shut down. Due to its reputational stain, the next buyer will pay a lower price and the sawmill will have to spend more to keep its aging plant in compliance. Declining profitability will hasten the decision to invest in a cleaner alternative.
Air Quality Management District Director Brian Wilson told the committee that the district issued only a few notices of violation each year but didn't mention that some single notices contain hundreds of violations. Wilson also insisted that the plant can operate without a permit even though district rules and Clean Air Act regulations disagree.
The sawmill's manager blamed the plant's many environmental violations on the 2022 earthquake, even though most of them had nothing to do with it. Richard Engels, RCEA's director of procurement, said that biomass is needed for resource adequacy and baseload power, although nearly half of RCEA's counterparts in California meet those requirements without it. Engels suggested opting up to RCEA's biomass-free Repower Plus as an alternative to ending the contract but, on questioning, admitted this would not reduce the amount of biomass RCEA must buy while the contract is in force.
Dr. Norman Bell, an old timer on the Advisory Committee, shed some light on why an agency whose purported purpose is giving the community a choice about the power we purchase would devote more agenda time to defending the biomass plant than to letting the committee hear the coalition's concerns. Bell recalled that at least one county supervisor's vote in favor of RCEA taking over power procurement from PG&E was won with a promise of biomass contracts for friends in the timber industry. Obviously, keeping that promise is more important to RCEA than the promises it made to the community.
While RCEA doesn't care about biomass emissions, it does care about keeping its customers. A recent risk analysis calls customers switching back to PG&E a serious threat to its business model. PG&E also has some biomass; the law requires big utilities to buy it; but it's only 4% of their generation compared to 20% of RCEA's. Even with all PG&E's gas plants, a kilowatt hour from RCEA's biomass-heavy power mix heats the planet 4 times more than a kilowatt hour from PG&E. Opting out of RCEA takes one phone call and sends an immediate message. From the rate comparison I found online the cheapest option, which makes the switch in 6 months, would raise the average electric bill by twelve dollars a year. That's a small price I think many would pay to get RCEA to shift its dirty millions to clean energy.