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Subsidizing a highly polluting, ineffective and financially burdensome industry is something California should never do—let alone when its already-beleaguered electric-utility ratepayers are footing the bill.
Yet in Sacramento legislation now moving rapidly toward passage would do just that. Assembly Bill 706 is authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Davis).
It would strengthen the dirty forest biomass electricity industry by propping up a duo of failing fuelstock-procurement programs that rely on subsidies—largely in the form of higher consumer electricity bills—to keep them afloat.
A.B. 706 is titled the Forest Organic Residue, Energy and Safety Transformation and Wildfire Prevention Fund Act. (Forests Forever Legislative Rule of Thumb: Long, elaborate bill names are often a telltale sign of greenwashing.)
The measure would unwisely direct 15 million tons per year of forest biomass to electric power facilities under the state's teetering BioMAT and BioRAM programs.
Backers of the scheme say removing woody material from California's forests is necessary because it reduces wildfire risk. But studies have shown that industrial-scale "thinning" and post-fire logging, which are similar to commercial extraction in virtually every way, increase wildfire conditions by removing vegetation that provides shade, traps moisture, and reduces drying wind speeds.
Both programs are scheduled to sunset in December. PG&E and Southern California Edison have called BioMAT, "administratively complex, costly, and largely unused."
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Paul Hughes
Executive Director
Forests Forever
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RESOURCES →
- Read our coalition's detailed Apr. 15 opposition letter on A.B. 706.
- Forests Forever's recent eAlert on a similar biomass scheme— the Golden State Natural Resources / Drax proposal— makes clear why burning wood (in this case wood pellets) for electricity is so dirty.
- Although wood-pellet bioelectricity continues to grow as a threat there are encouraging signs that the powers that be are waking up.