AGH Testimony on biomass heat in Maryland's renewable energy portfolio standard

The Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard – Tier 1 Renewable Source – Alterations (Reclaim Renewable Energy Act of 2022)

March 3, 2022

Position: Oppose HB 11.  Support HB 1085.

House Economic Matters Committee

 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is John Ackerly and I am the President of the Alliance for Green Heat, a Maryland based non-profit that promotes cleaner and more efficient wood and pellet heating. We strive to represent consumers and the environment – not the forest industry, or the wood and pellet stove and boiler industry. We support all renewable heating options – from geothermal to solar thermal to biomass thermal – because we need to aggressively deploy all these technologies to meet the global challenge of climate change.

Including thermal biomass as a Tier One renewable in Maryland’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard should not be ideological. Let’s follow the science. A few points that are important to consider.


1. Maryland has hardly any market for thermal biomass RECs and that is not likely to change. But we should not prevent good projects from getting built. If an institution can pencil out a project to use wood pellets or wood chips to heat their facility, we should support them, just as we would with other renewables.

2. A lot, if not most wood used in biomass thermal projects is waste wood, residuals that will be produced anyway. In my Takoma Park neighborhood, as in all Maryland towns and cities, we chip hundreds of tons of trees that fall down in storms or are taken down for one reason or another. They can go to make mulch for homeowners or other uses, but I believe they are best used to replace fossil fuel.

3. Larger wood heating systems have modern controls and produce little particulate matter. Otherwise, they would not be permitted by the Maryland Department of the Environment.

4. Compared to other renewables, making heat with wood chips or pellets is extremely low carbon. Remember, technologies like geothermal, for example, usually use a lot of fossil fuels to pump the heat out the ground or air. In fact, 30% or more of the energy created comes from the electricity needed to transfer heat. All technologies should be held to same standards, use the same carbon accounting method, based on science, not ideology.

Increasingly, stakeholders opposing biomass are more likely to have the science on biomass to electricity, and they then apply it to biomass for heat. We continually hear arguments, including from some members of this committee, who have read about the harvesting of trees in the US south to produce industrial wood pellets to ship to Europe to make electricity. This is what is in the news lately and if you don’t have much background on the issue, its easy to conflate the environmental issues with this energy pathway, with local, small-scale, high efficiency heating projects. Pellets made for massive electric utilities are from whole trees cut specifically to make pellets. They are then used at about 33% efficiency to make electricity, and the other 67% of the tree is lost as waste heat.

With local heating projects, trees are rarely cut solely to make heat. In Maryland the amount of residual

Waste wood at Baltimore's urban
waste wood lot

biomass is enormous. I would encourage each of you to read a January story from the Baltimore Sun about urban waste wood in Baltimore. It says “In a city with roughly 4,000 acres of woodland and many miles of streets lined with trees, about 9,000 tons of waste are cleared annually. It cost the city to dispose of that scrap wood and brush.”

A few comments on waste wood. A lot of domestical woody biomass is treated, for better or worse, as a waste product. The EPA documented that in 2018, landfills received 12.2 million tons of wood. This was 8.3 percent of all municipal solid waste landfilled that year.[1]

The US Forest Service estimates that urban waste wood amounts to be 46 million tons based on annual mortality rates.[2] With emerald ash borer, more frequent storms and natural mortality, cities and states struggle with disposing of wood and instead to produce revenue from it and use it as a renewable resource.

Let’s take my town of Takoma Park as an example. I served as co-chair of the Environment Committee that explored quickly reducing fossil fuels. However, the city is nonchalant about heating its buildings with gas, year after year. Often, officials brag that the city uses 100% renewable energy because its electric supply is renewable, forgetting that heat also uses energy. So, we take gas off the grid, gas that is likely made by fracking shale in Pennsylvania, but that gas could have even worse environmental implications and come from far further away. Meanwhile, arborists remove 100s of tons of waste wood from the city, much of it paid for by the city, so that it can be thrown away. Remember, wood is a very clean fuel compared to fossil fuels if you can combust it at a high enough temperature and use electrostatic precipitators and baghouses to reduce the particulates. Takoma Park’s municipal buildings are not ideal to be heated with wood chips, but municipal buildings in many of Maryland’s more rural areas could be.

Mike Tidwell, who led a
residential corn heating co-op

At the residential level, Takoma Park has been a national leader in biomass heat. The city subsidized a silo for corn that residents could use to heat their homes with corn stoves. This initiative was led by Mike Tidwell, who you all know well I assume. Mike still supports using biomass for local heating uses in his own home, in our community, our state and our country. He understands the carbon equation and how different it is from using biomass to ship to Europe to make electricity. While we believe wood pellets are a far better fuel than feed corn, there are many similarities between the two.

I would urge you to let local officials, local architects and planner and local economics in Western and Eastern Maryland make the decision about which renewables work best to heat buildings in their communities. The legislature in Annapolis should not do that for them.


Thank you for your consideration.

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[1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/wood-material-specific-data

[2] https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/59115

Thermal certificates can fuel commercial wood heating

Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) are the market instruments used by state governments to identify who produced renewable energy.  When states require utilities to meet a certain percent of their energy from renewables, they can either produce it themselves or buy RECs.  RECs have been the core mechanism for solar to grow in the United States, but rarely were they used for renewable heat.  Currently a number of states provide RECs for renewable heat, which could come from biomass, solar thermal or geothermal.   A handful of states, including New Hampshire and Massachusetts now include thermal biomass and Maine, Maryland and others are exploring it.

The Governor of Maryland proposed adding thermal RECs to Maryland's renewable portfolio standard (RPS) as part of its legislative package this year.  The Alliance for Green Heat was invited to testify to the Senate Finance Committee on February 23 and we reproduce our testimony below.  During the hearing on the House side, several witnesses opposed the legislation based on particulate matter emissions and carbon, so AGH focused comments on those areas.  

Chair Kelly and Vice-Chair Feldman and Members of the Senate Finance Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before this committee.  My name is John Ackerly and I am the President and Founder of the Alliance for Green Heat, a non-profit group based in Takoma Park Maryland that promotes renewable heating options.  As you may know, Takoma Park has a corn heating co-op, started by Mike Tidwell, before he founded the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.  What we are debating here is even better than heating with corn, because corn involved forest land conversion into agricultural fields.

We worked particularly closely with the Maryland Energy Administration and Delegate Heather Mizeur back in 2012 to set up their popular Wood Stove Grant Program, where about 85% of grants go to very clean burning pellet stoves.

We enthusiastically support the passage of Senate Bill 549 and the companion House Bill 682 because of the significant benefits to displacing fossil fuel.  We also support the amendments that would end Tier 1 RECs for black liquor since RECs should incentivize more renewable energy capacity, not subsidize existing renewable energy.  Thermal RECs have fallen prey to black liquor politics for too long.  It is time for a vote on their own merits.  

Particulate matter

Larger biomass systems are able to drastically reduce particulate matter (PM2.5) through electrostatic precipitators and other PM reduction technologies.  In terms of pollution, the most important thing to recognize with biomass heating is that residential wood stoves and boilers – whether EPA certified or not – are the biggest threat to local air quality.  A study done for the State of Minnesota shows the advantages of automated biomass boilers compared to traditional wood stoves. It shows that per unit of heat, wood stoves emit 12 to 25 times more PM10 than modern boilers.  

If Maryland wants to tackle wood smoke, the best solution would be to reduce the number of traditional wood stoves, particularly in more populated areas.  Pellet stove are an excellent residential heat option, and together with solar panels, can reduce a home’s fossil fuel usage by 50 – 90%.  

The benefit of passing this legislation in Maryland, is that the Maryland Department of the Environment has strict air quality regulations and staff that understand pollution control technologies.  The commercial systems that this legislation would enable will have to have technologies like electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) or similar technologies.  Most if not all Northeastern states have similar air quality protections but in some parts of the United States, ESPs would not be required and biomass heating plants could pose local air quality problems. 

Carbon

 From a carbon perspective, wood pellet heating emits less than half the carbon of propane and is even more favorable compared to heating oil or gas.  My organization has reviewed scores of Life Cycle Analyses (LCAs) and has not found any that show wood or pellets is worse than fossil heating fuels.  It’s important for this committee not to confuse the Life Cycle Analysis of industrial scale wood or pellets used make electricity, which is a far different equation.  When biomass is used for electricity, it is combusted at about 30% efficiency, but when it is combusted for heat it is up to 80% efficiency.  In addition, the harvesting methods for industrial scale pellets, for example, that are shipped to Europe, involve using more whole trees, not residuals as they do in Maryland.  

A peer reviewed University of New Hampshire study in 2017 found that heating with pellets reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 54 percent vs. home heating oil, and 59 percent vs. natural gas. This chart summarizes their results.

Other factors

When comparing modern biomass heating systems to fossil heating fuels, there is more to look at than just PM and carbon.  There are toxicity implications for soil, water and humans.  The chart below compares softwood (pine) pellets with other fuels.  (Brassica pellets are not used in America and refer to pellets made from agricultural crops, or possibly hay.). This is important because the Chesapeake Bay watershed is a sensitive one, and we are confident that these modern biomass heating plants compare relatively well in almost all respects to other fuels.

This committee is considering other bills to expand Maryland’s renewable energy portfolio and one that specifically seeks to expand geothermal energy in Maryland.  We also urge you to support the geothermal bill and urge you to consider the cost/benefit analysis of geothermal and look at other socio-economic factors.  We need to be mindful that investments in various renewable energy pathways benefit different communities and different workforces in Maryland.  Biomass heating – both at the residential and commercial scale – has far more benefits for rural Marylanders, whose homes and businesses do not have access to natural gas lines.  In this age where we all know that environmental justice is important and jobs for lower income Marylanders is important. We urge you to vote favorably on SB 549.

Sincerely,

John Ackerly,

President

Testimony in Support of Thermal Energy in Maryland's Renewable Portfolio Standard

HB 931 – Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard - Thermal Energy

Date: February 20, 2014
Committee: Economic Matters
SUPPORT

John Ackerly, President
Alliance for Green Heat
6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 407
Takoma Park, Maryland 20912
301-841-7755

Email: jackerly@forgreenheat.org

Position:

The Alliance for Green Heat urges the Economic Matters Committee to issue a favorable report on HB 931 either in its present form or with amendments offered by Delegate Stein.

Comments:

Thank you Chairman Davis and member of the Committee for this opportunity to testify.

We would also like to thank the Maryland Thermal Energy Task Force for the work they did and  we support their recommendations. While it was disappointing that the bill to include thermal woody biomass in the RPS last year did not pass, the creation of this Task Force was an excellent process to bring more coherence and consistency to thermal energy pathways in the RPS.

Any RPS that focuses on only one renewable energy pathway – electricity – creates unfair and mostly unintended consequences for other energy pathways, notably heat energy. If an RPS excludes heat energy, we lose leverage over a huge piece of the energy pie. Including thermal energy gives us many more ways to reduce fossil fuels and bring more renewable technologies to the table so that we can achieve even more aggressive renewable energy goals.

Delegate Dana Stein, sponsor of
HB 931

The Alliance for Green Heat focuses on residential wood and pellet heating which is by far the largest contributor of residential renewable energy in Maryland and the United States.

There are 12 million installations of wood and pellet heating appliances in the United States, compared to less than half a million solar panel installations. Biomass heat can tap into this huge residential renewable energy market because it is far more affordable than solar or geothermal. The problem is that most homes in Maryland and the US that use wood heat have old stoves that are too polluting. Including residential thermal biomass in the RPS will help thousands of Maryland families to be able to afford an upgrade to modern, cleaner and more efficient technology.

We have focused our incentives on solar and geothermal, which favor wealthy families and left out rural middle and low-income families who heat with wood and pellets. Including residential thermal biomass in the RPS will extend the benefits of the RPS to average Maryland families and not just focus those benefits on the wealthy families that install solar and geothermal and who are typically concentrated in Montgomery and Howard counties.

We believe all Maryland households should have the option to participate in our renewable energy future and that means including technologies like new, high efficiency EPA certified wood and pellet stoves in the RPS. We commend the Maryland Energy Administration for starting a grant program for wood and pellet stoves, like they have for solar, but this rebate is simply not enough for many families to overcome the initial purchase price of a system that can effectively heat their entire home. Residential thermal RECS will enable lower and middle-income Maryland families to benefit from this economic framework just like wealthy Maryland families.

For these reasons, we strongly favor reforming the RPS to be more cost effective and more technology neutral in achieving the renewable energy goals that are important to Maryland’s economic and environmental health and well-being. 

HB931 creates an incentive to more efficiently utilize our finite biomass resources, putting less pressure on the sustainability of our forests to meet increasing energy demands. HB931 will increase jobs, wealth, and economic benefits associated with using biomass for energy in Maryland.

We support the 65% efficiency minimum. If anything, with respect to residential wood and pellet heating, 65% is on the low side. Most residential wood and pellet heaters achieve 70% efficiency and the best ones are over 80%, measured in higher heat value (HHV) using the EPA endorsed CSA B415.1 calculation. Given the diverse stakeholders impacted by this legislation, we think 65% efficiency is fair and achievable for new, thermal systems.

We also strongly support excluding wood waste that includes treated or painted wood because most non-utility scale plants do not have the emission control systems that could handle wood waste without creating air quality problems.

Thank you and I would be happy to take any questions.

Click here for a pdf copy of the Fiscal Note analyzing the costs of this bill.