Final Thoughts United Behind Bioenergy With our addiction to oil growing every year, what can we do to become less dependent on fossil fuels? By C. Scott Miller t’s a shame that most of North Ameri-ca’s energy press from 2011 centred on the Canadian tar sands and Keystone XL pipeline project. Is this supposed to be a sustainable solution to the skyrocketing global demand for energy? Can we end our “so-called “oil addiction” by building more infrastructure? No, buying a faster delivery system won’t help end our addiction. Quite the opposite—it will deepen it. It is certainly an understandable politi-cal play for our continent, which is strug-gling to survive a global economic col-lapse that was spurred, in large part, by I “Fossil industry jobs are, in fact, temporary and will only serve to further entrench our dependence.” the last oil price spike. But what do lob-byists and politicians suggest we do for an encore, and what will be the potential consequences for future generations? It is reasonable to ask: Should we re-strain bioenergy deployment policies un-til economics are more favourable? This is the issue that arose during a fractious Proposition 23 campaign in California in 2010. The oil industry promoted the po-sition that California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (passed in 2006 and due to begin enforcement in 2012) would be too costly to implement. They claimed that the Low Carbon Fuel Stan-dard (LCFS) emissions cap and trade pro-visions would lead to more expensive en-ergy and cost industry jobs. Opponents disagreed and defeated Proposition 23 by a whopping 23% mar-gin. Fossil industry jobs are, in fact, tem-porary and will only serve to further en-trench our dependence on oil and coal. The problem isn’t simply that we are de-pendent on fossil fuels, it’s that the depen-dence is getting stronger while worldwide demand for energy is rapidly increasing, particularly in Asia. Meanwhile, the number of “clean” en-ergy jobs in California has increased 36% between 1995 and 2008. The profusion of print and online pub-lications like Canadian Biomass, Biofuels Digest, and BBI magazines, coupled with almost weekly industry conferences and webinars, gives strong testimony to the strength of our continent’s desire for tackling energy demands using bioenergy convert-ed from low-value biomass. There are many terrific examples of cross-border bioenergy collaboration that together make a compelling case for long-term sustainability: • Plasco municipal waste-to-energy plasma technology from Ottawa is undergoing project development in Salinas, California. • Montreal’s Enerkem green waste-to-biofuels process has been green-lighted for installation in Pontotoc, Mississippi. • Pellet production from bug-in-fested wood in British Columbia, as well as fuel wood in Georgia, is destined for European bio-power projects. • Torrefied wood conversion is be-ing developed in Europe and the Carolinas so Alberta can one day satisfy their aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standards through co-firing with coal. These technologies are criticized as costly and too small-scale to make any substantial difference. Individual emerg-ing technologies usually are small, but un-less we invest in them now, we won’t have any scalable alternatives for later. North America needs to conduct car-bon accounting comparisons between biogenic solutions and the status quo fos-sil fuel paradigm that predict decade-and century-long consequences. We need to insist on holistic economic comparisons against the costs of doing nothing. We need stable energy policies that inspire in-vestor confidence for funding the scale-up of emerging technologies. Some of these deployments may fail but they will nevertheless move us closer to a sustainable energy future. • C. Scott Miller, MBA, is a bioenergy marketing/com-munications consultant based in Los Angeles, Cali-fornia. He is president of the Victory Plant initiative for stimulating the buildout of promising biorefinery projects in North America. He works as a woody bio-mass aggregation consultant, social media strategist and member of the American Council on Renewable Energy. He can be reached through his company web-site at www.millerdewulf.com. Final Thoughts runs at the back of every issue of Canadian Biomass, and provides a forum where individuals involved in the forest industry can discuss the topics most important to them. Each column will run a maximum of 650 words. If you would like to contribute, please e-mail [email protected]. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 38 Canadian BIOMASS
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