One of the excuses the Climate Cult makes for ignoring the significant emissions from biomass plants is that, because it is carbon captured by plants, it makes it renewable. Plants capture CO2, so it’s okay to burn them and emit whatever into wherever. This is a cop out. Every fuel on the planet, except nuclear, is derived from stored natural carbon.
Plants don’t differentiate between sources; they absorb it and grow, as evidenced by the correlation between current estimates of Atmospheric CO2 and the recent rapid greening of the Earth. It’s almost as if the planet has done this before and knows what it is doing. And the Climate Cult knows this, too. It is why they changed from ‘CO2′ to ’emissions’ or pollution and ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’.
The same excuse used to dismiss biomass “emissions” is also being used for biogas. That’s the process of converting natural waste into gas that can be burned to power a turbine and generate electricity. I actually like this idea. It addresses waste stream issues while generating power that is neither intermittent nor unreliable, like natural gas, but from garbage. What I dislike is advocates claiming it is renewable and poses less of a threat to the climate than natural gas.
This looks like another convenient lie.
PurposeEnergy and Ben & Jerry’s announced the grand opening of the St. Albans Renewable Energy Facility on Thursday. The New Hampshire-based company has already built several facilities in Vermont, such as in Middlebury last year. The first major step towards building this one, which is located in the St. Albans Industrial Park south-west of downtown, was in 2021 when the company signed an agreement with Ben & Jerry’s to receive organic and food waste. A dedicated pipeline will carry waste from Ben & Jerry’s, which has a nearby warehouse, directly to the plant, which will then be turned into electricity and clean water.
I’m happy that Ben & Jerry’s is going to turn its garbage into energy, but I’m curious how much it gets paid for this feedstock? It should be paid, but biogas is currently more expensive than natural gas, wind, and solar. However, I doubt the latter two are lower, absent substantial subsidies necessary to achieve those rates.
The question continues to be, how much more are Vermonters going to be made to pay for this latest virtue signal?
Just to be clear, biogas is the least offensive alternative peddled as renewable (remember, they don’t want to call nuclear or hydro renewable). Done right, every city or county in the country could run a biogas plant as a way to address both electricity demand and reduce the waste stream. They’ve all got good feedstock. Past storage or transfer costs are converted into a useful resource.
Allowed to develop in a free market, the facility, production, and operating costs could be reduced, making biogas a cheap and reliable energy source. I have no objections to this, much like I have no objections to the private use of wind or solar energy: Minus subsidies, prop-ups, incentives, or other schemes to encourage adoption. Be you, but don’t expect me to pay more for your electricity generation, or to pay for end-of-life problems related to the disposal of your not-so-green energy choices.
What irks me is the virtue signalling—the adoption of a morally superior posture. We’re saving the planet. You’re not. Stop it. It’s a good idea that, at scale, has the potential to be the first useful energy idea you’ve embraced in decades. Please don’t ruin it by pretending that biomass or biogas emissions are happy, friendly, things you can ignore because the people lying about the climate apocalypse for four decades say so.
The gas you’re so happy about is mostly methane. Theis evil supergas drives the strange misguided desire to end meat consumption to reduce the number of cows to mitigate farts which got nothin’ on biogas.
Biogas is typically two-thirds methane, one-third CO2, processed to 95% methane before combustion. And you plan to cultivate a lot of it to perpetuate a green scheme. However, if your methane loss rate exceeds 3%, your green machine, on your terms, is worse for the environment than natural gas.
I’m not worried about that. The Green lobby is a bigger threat to human health and the planet. And I’m happy to let biogas grow as an energy source, unsubsidized, of course, but let’s stop pretending it’s renewable. All the energy in the ground on planet Earth is natural. The carbon came from somewhere before it ended there. Your insistence that letting it out is bad and can only be fixed if we embrace communism is not a compelling argument.
