Walden, Gore debate the merits of biomass
Woody debris from federal land isn’t renewable under energy bill
Published: April 25. 2009 4:00AM PST
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Greg Walden and former Vice President Al Gore shared a testy exchange Friday over how to use woody debris from federal lands in a U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
In an unusual four-day-long hearing this week, Walden repeatedly pressed witnesses about why woody debris from federal land doesn’t count as renewable energy in a massive bill to reduce greenhouse gases that is being debated in the House committee. Gore was on hand as perhaps the most famous of a host of experts on climate change and energy who testified throughout the week.
It’s unclear who exactly requested that debris from federal lands be excluded from federal renewable energy standards. But powerful environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, have said including that material would encourage unsustainable logging in federal forests to meet demand for biomass power plants.
“We think that until and unless we have safeguards in place that address everyone’s concerns about the impact of sourcing some of these biomass resources, then it’s an appropriate safeguard,” David Hawkins, the director of climate programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, testified this week.
On Friday, Walden challenged Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign to slow climate change.
If forests are being thinned now to reduce fire danger, why not turn that woody material into energy, Walden asked.
“When that material comes out, why in the devil do we say it’s not renewable and can’t be turned into pucks like this to help reduce carbon from coal?” Walden said, holding a disk made mostly of compressed sawdust. “This could be put in a coal plant in my district if they could get enough of this made. … Why do they preclude it in this bill?”
Gore said past management of forests has made him wary of changing that provision. Canadian forests haven’t avoided massive wildfires, despite a more aggressive thinning program than in the U.S., Gore said.
“In Canada, they have this kind of management approach, and yet their forests are being devastated,” Gore said. “I think the record of what’s happened when (forests have) been opened up in the past has given a lot of people pause.”
To stress the urgency of acting on climate change, Gore put a question to Walden.
“Congressman, as a matter of curiosity, are you seeing the tree death in your forests from the beetles and the drying?” Gore asked.
“I am,” Walden said, immediately holding aloft three poster-sized photographs of forests in varying degrees of health.
“We have a 79-year backlog (of thinning projects) at the rate we’re treating right now to get these forests into balance to deal with the climate change you outline.”
Walden, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has pushed to change the definition of renewable biomass since a 2007 energy bill blocked woody debris on federal land from counting toward the federal renewable fuel standard.
Walden’s staff said he plans to offer several amendments — perhaps “a whole stack” — when the energy bill is debated in the Energy and Commerce Committee next week.
They will likely include provisions to require federal Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management offices to be heated with biomass, to count woody debris on federal lands as renewable biomass and to include existing hydropower as renewable energy.
Although several Central Oregon biomass proposals are now in limbo, the region’s ample forestland — and the efforts to reduce fire danger — make it a good place to develop biomass power, said Phil Chang, a project manager for the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council.
“Here in Central Oregon, we have a very long season where you can do forest operations. We also have lots of flat ground, a very small stream network and a very large road network,” Chang said. “Central Oregon is one of the best places in the Western U.S. for biomass extraction.”
But if biomass from federal forests doesn’t count toward federal renewable energy quotas, producers will have less incentive to develop that resource, Chang said.
“That would put biomass power plants that uses federal biomass at a huge disadvantage,” Chang said.
Gore pushed back forcefully against critical questions by Republican members of the panel. When Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the top Republican on the committee, read from a book asserting that global warming isn’t hurting ocean coral, as had been predicted, Gore said the science on the harms of global warming is clear.
“I believe you have relied on people you have trusted who have given you bad information,” Gore said to Barton. “I don’t blame the investors who trusted Bernie Madoff, but he gave them bad information.”
And Gore was ready for a question Walden asked every witness this week: Did you read the entire energy bill?
“Congressman, I have read all 648 pages of this bill,” Gore said. “It took me two transcontinental flights on United Airlines to finish it.”
Keith Chu can be reached at 202-662-7456 or at kchu@bendbulletin.com.
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