This article appeared on the opinion page of the Fresno BEE on June 18.
Far from being a good energy source, biomass threatens Central Valley health, climate
by Nayamin Martinez, executive director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network
by Nayamin Martinez, executive director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network
Communities in the Central Valley breathed easier when the biomass power plant in Mendota
was shut down in 2016, after years of being one of the biggest air polluters in the region.
It was a particular relief for residents of the mobile home park a quarter mile away, who’d
been breathing the plant’s dangerous fine particles for years.
This matters because fine particulate matter penetrates deep into the lungs, entering the
bloodstream. These tiny particles are linked to serious health problems including heart
disease, premature death, stroke and aggravated asthma.
But our community health is still in danger, with Assemblymember Rudy Salas acting on
behalf of the industry by promoting dirty biomass energy for the Valley and our state.
The truth is that biomass is a false solution that harms our health and our climate.
Contrary to industry claims, biomass power plants are major emitters of air pollutants,
especially fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, and are guilty of repeated air quality
violations.
Before it was closed, the Mendota biomass plant was the largest stationary source of fine
particulate pollution in Kings, Fresno and Madera counties combined. The Rio
Bravo biomass plant in Fresno is the second-largest point source of fine particulate pollution
in Fresno County.
Particulate pollution causes an estimated 1,200 premature deaths in the Valley every year.
In the San Joaquin Valley, four out of five active biomass plants are in disadvantaged
communities with some of the highest air pollution in the state. The Rio Bravo biomass plant
in Fresno is located less than a half-mile from Malaga Elementary School, Malaga
Community Park and surrounding homes. It sits in a majority Hispanic neighborhood with the
state’s highest pollution score.
Like fossil fuels, biomass is a carbon-burning energy source that spews climate-heating
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In fact, biomass power is more carbon polluting at the
smokestack than coal.
Biomass accelerates the climate crisis at the exact time when we must rapidly cut carbon
pollution to avoid devastating climate impacts like the drought that we’re in now.
It’s also not needed for stabilizing the electrical grid. Biomass power currently supplies less
than 3% of the state’s total electric power. Instead, grid stabilization can be achieved with
truly clean and renewable solar and wind power, paired with energy storage.
Salas’s claim that biomass is affordable is another inaccuracy. Biomass is California’s most
expensive electricity source, averaging more than three times the cost of solar or wind power.
This expensive and dirty business is propped up by subsidies paid for by taxpayers and utility
customers, diverting investment away from genuine clean energy sources.
Salas claims that forests are not being chopped down and turned into power, but reports and
photo evidence of whole trees trucked in and piled up at biomass facilities show that Salas is
simply wrong.
Biomass energy is often promoted as a way to incentivize large-scale tree-cutting — using
misleading labels like “thinning” under the claim that this will protect communities during
wildfires.
In reality forest cutting doesn’t stop fire and can actually cause fires to burn hotter and faster.
Indeed, under a logging and thinning approach, California’s communities have suffered
unprecedented wildfire deaths and home destruction.
Instead, research and experience show that the most effective way to protect homes and
communities in fire-prone areas is through home-hardening retrofits to make homes
themselves more fire-safe and reducing vegetation in the 100 feet of defensible space
immediately surrounding homes.
The bottom line is that burning wood for electricity is an outdated, dirty energy source that
harms vulnerable communities, worsens the climate crisis, and diverts resources away from
genuine climate solutions such as solar and wind.
We encourage lawmakers like Assemblymember Salas to get the facts and work towards a
clean energy future for the Central Valley. Biomass is not it.
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