I feel a little like Ronald Reagan did when he offered that now famous retort to then President Carter&rsquo;s attack on his positions on health care.&nbsp;
Frequent readers of my blogs know that I find mainstream coverage of the biomass industry wanting. A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/business/economy/a-biofuel-debate-will-cutting-trees-cut-carbon.html?_r=2">&nbsp;story</a>&nbsp;from the New York Times authored by Eduardo Porter entitled &ldquo;A Biofuel Debate: Will Cutting Trees Cut Carbon?&rdquo; is the latest in a growing string of well-intentioned stories about our industry that I&rsquo;m afraid do little to illuminate the realities of how our industry fits into the broader energy, forestry and agriculture landscape.
While Porter never mentions wood pellets, it is clear that early in his piece he&rsquo;s talking about global and national policies that support a transition to the production of electric power from woody biomass.
He writes, &ldquo;What is more, bioenergy is now being drafted to make electricity. Last November, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency issued a policy memo widely seen as encouraging the harvest of forests to produce power by treating it as a carbon-free source.&rdquo;
I don&rsquo;t disagree that the memo provides an opportunity for the greater deployment of power derived from woody biomass, an opportunity and a policy direction I certainly support. What I take issue with in that quote is Porter&rsquo;s choice of words. Like so many other mainstream journalists before him, Porter paints a picture entire forests being felled solely for the production of electricity.
&ldquo;Encouraging the harvest of forests to produce power&rdquo; is an eight word phrase that, for me, is a poster child for the kind of inaccurate language that so often clouds the public debate around this issue.
Forestry, we all know, does not work like that. Still, I&rsquo;m not sure the average reader of the New York Times understands this. In fact, I&rsquo;m certain they do not and this is what I think is so dangerous about articles like Porter&rsquo;s.
Porter&rsquo;s article features quotes from Tim Searchinger, a frequent and oft-quoted critic of biofuels and now, apparently, biopower.&nbsp;
He quotes Searchinger as saying, &ldquo;Dedicating land to bioenergy always comes at a cost because that land cannot produce plants for other purposes.&rdquo;
Who said anything about &ldquo;dedicating land to bioenergy&rdquo;? That implies that the crops produced on a particular piece of ground will offer no other utility than being converted into some sort of energy product. Searchinger and the readers&rsquo; of these types of quotes should be reminded that there are currently no practical examples of this. I&rsquo;ll go ahead an offer Searchinger&rsquo;s retort. I&rsquo;m sure Searchinger would point to all of the corn acreage dedicated to the production of ethanol. What Searchinger knows, however, is that the ethanol captures only the carbohydrate portion of the kernel while allowing the fiber and protein to pass through the process as the feed product dried distillers grains with solubles more commonly known as DDGS.&nbsp;
This is not insignificant. Without the revenues from DDGS, the ethanol business model doesn&rsquo;t work. Similarly, forests managed exclusively for the production of woody biomass to create power don&rsquo;t exist because the economics of it don&rsquo;t work. Had Porter interviewed anyone that owns forests, or anyone that represents those people he would have been told that forests are managed for the highest valued product they can create, largely dimensional lumber that can be made from a stand&rsquo;s best of the best, the sound and round individuals on the property. Pellet producers cannot afford these trees. In fact, pellet producers struggle to compete with buyers for even the lowest value fiber on a tract and pellet plants are carefully sited to sit in wood baskets where competition for these lower value pulp is low.
Porter, and anyone else&rsquo;s assertion that policies for power made from woody biomass will result in widespread deforestation are just wrong. The economic return it offers to landowners just isn&rsquo;t there. If he&rsquo;s interested, Porter should read my last <a href="http://www.biomassmagazine.com/blog/article/2015/02/the-proof-is-in-the-potatoes">blog</a> is he wants some bearing on the economic situation that does result in deforestation. The vast stands of forest in central Minnesota that are being felled are not falling for a pellet mill, they are falling because a company looking for potato acreage made an offer the current owners of the stands couldn&rsquo;t refuse.
Finally, I&rsquo;m starting my own &ldquo;Wall of Shame&rdquo; for the extreme examples of hyperbole that get thrown around in mainstream media coverage of this debate. Porter&rsquo;s closing paragraph and sentence are the first inductees.
Porter using a gross inaccuracy to appeal to his reader&rsquo;s emotions concludes his piece saying, &ldquo;The United States used to rely heavily on bioenergy for transport: 100 years ago, tens of millions of acres were devoted to growing feed for pack animals. Since then, much of this land has reverted to forest. Razing it again for fuel is not the best idea.&rdquo;
Razing Porter? There you go again.
&nbsp;

Biomass Magazine Executive Editor examines the latest in a growing string of mainstream media stories that fail to properly frame up the realities of how bioenergy is deployed in practice.

There You Go Again

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