Carbon “Czar”, Christina Prestella, project manager of the Sierra Nevada Carbon Cooperative, recently answered a question posed by a reader of the Sierra County Prospect on carbon, biomass, and the future of our Sierra Nevada forests. Her response:
Woody Biomass Utilization and the Sierra Nevada: A Compromise
By Christina Prestella – Sierra Business Council
So often in America, we find ourselves in dispute over the best way to manage our resources. Shall we protect them and endanger the economy? Or shall we use them and put our environment at risk? Either way, we jeopardize a form of capital, whether it is natural, social, or financial. At the Sierra Business Council, our mission is to pioneer approaches which foster all three of these types of capital, without compromising any of the three. The woody biomass utilization argument mentioned in last week’s edition of the Sierra Prospect is a great illustration of a lack of agreement in response to providing energy to our Sierra Nevada communities. Instead of utilizing the massive overgrowth of woody materials in our own backyards for energy, we depend on foreign sources which poison our air and our economy.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports that for every megawatt of woody biomass power produced, 4.9 jobs are created. Additionally, by increasing use of renewable and alternative fuels, we reduce the use of petroleum-based fuels. The USEPA has presented a lifecycle analysis which shows that the use of woody biomass results in a 90.1% reduction of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, relative to the petroleum fuel that is being displaced. Local timber milling and utilization of woody biomass is clearly a less polluting form of energy, and provides good, local jobs, so why is the industry failing?…
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