I thought that with alternative fuels, our planet was supposed to get greener, butterfiles were to flutter further, and the sun was to shine a bit brighter?
Not so fast.
Apparently biomass – you know, that so-called “green technology” that’s been advocated from McAuliffe to McDonnell – is also on the list of evils that will doom the planet and deplete the ozone layer according to our friends at the EPA.
Yep, what was supposed to be a “carbon neutral” technology, has found its way to being regulated under the Green House Gas “Tailoring Rule” by the EPA, which will treat the combustion of biomass emissions the same as emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel.
This might seem like a reasonable idea, but it will have profound economic impact on this fledgling energy source.
According to the National Alliance of Forest Owners, the increased regulation will jeapordize “over 130 renewable energy projects, between 11,000 and 26,000 green jobs, and $18 billion in capital investment across the country. The risk of reduced capacity also could prevent as many as 30 states from meeting national renewable energy targets.”
So if it’s not oil and natural gas, it’s now an energy source that the EPA admits doesn’t add CO2 to the atmosphere? From a fact sheet on the subject:
- EPA’s Tailoring Rule reverses the government’s precedent and policy regarding biomass emissions. It is well established government policy that carbon emitted in the combustion of forest biomass—unlike conventional fossil fuels—comes from CO2 that was recently removed from the air by the forest, thus resulting in a “carbon neutral” cycle.
- Neither the EPA, the Department of Energy, nor the Council on Environmental Quality count emissions of carbon dioxide from combustion of biomass when inventorying and reporting carbon dioxide emissions.
- EPA, in the final Tailoring Rule, became the first federal agency to depart from this established position and without any prior notice to the public.
- EPA’s recently stated, there is “[s]cientific consensus . . . that the CO2 emitted from burning biomass will not increase total atmospheric CO2 if this consumption is done on a sustainable basis.” Environmental Protection Agency Combined Heat and Power Partnership, Biomass Combined Heat and Power Catalog of Technologies, 96 (Sept. 2007), available at www.epa.gov/chp/documents/biomass_chp_catalog.pdf.
Is there anything these guys won’t try to regulate? These radicals have gone wild.
More importantly – quit unnecessarily increasing energy costs!
