¦POLICY put a focus on how energy is produced and used for transportation, heat and power generation. Not even considering the environmental benefits of a policy for replacing coal with pellets in power plants, because of the job supporting characteristics of the strategy, even U.S. policymakers who have supported Trump’s environmental policies should support a strategy for substituting sustainably sourced pellets for coal.
Climate Change Needs Attention Now
SOURCE: FUTUREMETRICS
STRATEGY FOR BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE Existing U.S. coal power stations can be part of the transition to a low-carbon economy. BY WILLIAM STRAUSS
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rior to the Trump administration, the U.S. had promulgated the Clean Power Plan. The CPP would have required states to achieve lower carbon emission goals in the power generation sector by 2030, contributing to U.S. commitments in the Paris Agreement. In aggregate, the U.S. would have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by electricity generation by about 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. FutureMetrics research and analysis, discussed in several white papers since 2015, showed that a part of a strategy for reaching those goals should be support for substituting sustainably produced wood pellets for coal in existing U.S. power plants.
This is not a novel idea. The U.S. is the world’s largest producer and exporter of sustainably produced wood pellets that are used in power plants in many nations as part of their GHG reduction strategies. Global trade in pellets that are replacing coal for power generation will be about 24 million metric tons in 2020. Under the CPP, the U.S. would have begun to use domestically produced pellets for meeting U.S. GHG reduction targets. The Clean Power Plan was scrapped by the Trump administration. The incoming Biden administration has already demonstrated its commitment to reenergizing the U.S.’s commitment to fighting climate change and reducing carbon emissions. This reenergized attention to climate change will
All policymakers should be motivated by the increasing costs of the consequences of a rapidly warming planet. Figure 1 should be a call to action for everyone, regardless of political affiliation. It is produced by the actuaries that advise insurance companies about how to price risk. The trajectory in the chart is not conducive to the cost of doing business. To get from where we are today to future goals for lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and control over anthropogenic global warming, a portfolio of complementary solutions will be required.
Evolution to Zero Carbon Emissions
As is the case in many countries already, the Biden administration should embrace a portfolio of solutions that optimize the tactics for an effective path to GHG reduction goals for the future. A pragmatic policy for lowering the CO2 intensity of the power generation sector with a transition to renewable energy needs to be tempered with the need to maintain reliability and stability in the delivery of electricity. Moving to increased renewable generation is more complicated than simply building lots of wind turbines and solar farms. That is often the offered solution, with a reference to solving the intermittency and variability of wind and solar with battery or hydrogen storage. The future for power generation relying heavily on electricity generated from wind turbines and solar farms is a worthy goal that should define the destination. But deploying more wind
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32 BIOMASS MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1, 2021
