With upward trends in the cost of fossil fuels and concerns over carbon levels in the atmosphere, the pursuit of renewable energy is growing in America. Numerous laws have passed or are being considered that would use penalties and incentives to move the nation into greater reliance on more eco-friendly transportation, heat, and power.
Some of those laws, such as the ones regarding harvesting biomass from federal forests, could greatly affect Cook County’s economy.
Cap and trade legislation
An article by researcher Cheryl Miller entitled Trapping Greenhouse Gases: A Role for Minnesota Agriculture in Climate Change Policy” published in 2009 in the Center for Rural Policy and Development’s Rural Minnesota Journal explains how cap and trade legislation would attempt to reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. “In the past decade,” Miller writes, “a new paradigm has emerged for funding large-scale conservation efforts through voluntary and mandatory carbon reduction programs. The Kyoto Protocol and current and proposed programs in the United States and elsewhere utilize a ‘cap-and-trade,’ or marketbased, approach for managing GHG pollution.” Companies can emit a certain amount of carbon gas measured in “credits.” If they emit less than allowed, they can bank them or sell them. If they emit more than allowed, they can buy them. One hundred seventy countries signed the Kyoto Protocol agreement, but not the United States.
Some support the idea of a tax on the amount of carbon emissions caused by everything from a plane trip to a loaf of bread.
According to Jim Bowyer in an article entitled The Future of Forestry in Minnesota’s Economy, published in the Center for Rural Policy and Development’s Rural Minnesota Journal, “Should the United States develop a cap and trade system that recognizes both avoided emissions and carbon storage in long-lived products, then wood-based industries will likely experience significant growth.”
An October 2009 National Geographic article on the redwoods of northern California presented the philosophy of private forest manager Jim Fay, who evaluates clear-cut areas every decade to see what can be sustainably harvested. “He never takes more wood than the forest has grown over that time, which means the remaining trees— what he calls his principal— continue to increase in height, volume, and quality.
“…More landowners are … growing their redwoods older and cutting them more sparingly. Some call this ecological forestry, in which the forest is managed to provide wildlife habitat and clean rivers as well as forestry jobs and wood products.
“…California’s voluntary market for forest landowners is among the most rigorous in the world. The market allows owners to sell credits for the carbon stored in each year’s grown wood as long as they guarantee to maintain that growth for a century.
“Money for carbon stored in living trees could help landowners make the transition from short-term clear-cuts to longterm rotations where bigger, higher quality trees could once again dominate the landscape.”
According to an August 2009 article entitled Feeding the Air: Northern Woods Poised to benefit from carbon credit market in Business North, headquartered in Duluth, “Mandatory cap and trade is controversial, though many say it’s inevitable. Farmers have sold carbon credits since the early 1990s. By not tilling the soil, allowing crops to decay naturally, and changing their system of planting, farmers can reduce their carbon output. They also can get credits for converting fields back to grassland or forest.”
The article goes on to state that U.S. industries will still have an incentive to relocate overseas if other nations like China and India don’t pass carbon credit legislation.
Timber can be harvested while increasing the amount of sequestered carbon through several methods, the article states: by increasing the proportion of long-lived, shade-tolerant trees; establishing longer rotation schedules; harvesting for more longer-lived products (such as construction materials) than shorter-lived products (such as paper); and frequent thinning to reduce the number of trees that die, decompose, and emit carbon, using them for products like furniture and veneer.
American Clean Energy and Security Act included standards for decreasing energy use and increasing energy efficiency and established a cap-and-trade standard.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the legislation also included a program “to reduce tropical deforestation, which now accounts for about one-fifth of global carbon emissions.”
Federal land was not included in the act’s definition of biomass at first, but then it was added. Whether it would or would not be included in similar legislation in the future could have a big impact on the economy of Cook County.
The Natural Resources Defense Council wants to see biomass from federal forests restricted, saying that adding it into the ACES Act removed important safeguards. NRDC Policy Director David Doniger wrote that staying out of roadless areas and mature forests is not enough. He advocated for more stringent limitations on the amount of biomass.
American Renewable Biomass Heating Act
The federal American Renewable Biomass heating Act would give tax credits for largescale high-efficiency biomass heating systems in commercial and industrial buildings.
National forest lands in biomass legislation
Will federal forests be included in legislation that credits initiatives that reduce atmospheric carbon? Senator Al Franken released this statement to the News-Herald: “We need to work on state and federal policy so that sustainably harvested biomass from national forests can qualify as part of the renewable fuels standard and a national renewable electricity standard.
“Forests also provide significant carbon sequestration potential, and federal climate legislation should provide forestry offset credits for environmentally sound forestry practices that sequester carbon in the soil.”
If the 70 percent of Cook County’s vast amount of land in federal hands could count for carbon offset credits, a whole lot of money could be generated.
How does Franken view the potential affect of proposed federal legislation on Cook County’s economy? “Proposed energy and climate bills in the Senate and House of Representatives include language that includes certain products from national forests in the definition of renewable biomass. I’ll be following this language as these and any other energy bills move forward in the Senate.
“But we need to think beyond definitions and look more broadly at policy tools to encourage responsible forest management practices, which … present tremendous economic opportunities for northern Minnesota.”
Dovetail Partners, a nonprofit research group working through the Blandin Foundation’s Vital Forests/Vital Communities Initiative, completed a study on using local biomass to heat and power communities. It recommended that federal forests be included in future legislation promoting renewable fuels. “As the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is currently written, woody biomass from national forests and other public lands, plus most private forestland, is excluded,” its study reported. “The significance to wood-based district heating is that future legislation written to encourage thermal energy systems could use the same definition of woody biomass, thus excluding the majority of forestland in the U.S. and suppressing future development of this industry.”
A summary of major provisions of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 prepared for Congress states that the act was designed “to increase energy efficiency and the availability of renewable energy,” although not including federal forests in the definition of biomass reduced significantly the amount of biomass available for such initiatives.
The state-initiated Minnesota Forest Resources Council has been trying to address the need for pricing of wood products from public lands in a way that is workable for everyone. According to its 2010 website, “Recent fluctuations in Minnesota’s stumpage market have raised concern about the policies, procedures, and contract provisions associated with Minnesota’s timber sale programs on public land.”
The USDA’s Farm Service Agency has a new program authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill that pays a match to biomass producers who deliver biomass to a qualified biomass conversion facility.
This is the ninth in a series of articles on issues related to utilizing biomass from the Superior National Forest as a source of local renewable energy and its potential to benefit the economy of Cook County.
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