The Presidential Palace. The Presidential Palace in Guinea Bissau lies derelict and burnt out. You can walk amongst the shards of broken crockery, blackened banisters, and singed carpets. Its empty rooms are a fitting metaphor for this failing state.

Teachers in the public sector have not been paid in years. Portuguese, the official language, is hardly spoken by young people and the nation is reverting to a creole contributing to its international isolation.

In a country which ranks 10th from the bottom on the U.N.'s Human Development Index and where life expectancy is 47, there are perhaps more pressing concerns than educating people about climate change.

However, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is doing just that. Nelson Gomez Dias, Country Director in Guinea Bissau, described the mobile laboratory used to educate children in Guinea Bissau on one of its most pressing environmental challenges. Biomass fuel.

Biomass fuel (charcoal and wood) is the single greatest contributor to deforestation in the world. The rural roads of Guinea Bissau are lined with sacks of the stuff on sale to truck drivers to transport to urban markets. And there is great demand as 80 percent of Africans rely on biomass for energy.

The IUCN takes its laboratory to schools across the country. Climate change per se is not on the curriculum. They believe you can only encourage people to act sustainably if you offer them a tangible improvement to their quality of life.

They ask children to boil two liters of water, trialling three methods: the traditional three stone fire with charcoal, with wood, and a biomass burning stove made from termite mud, cow dung and rice stalks. The latter performs better against all criteria: time to boil, amount of fuel required, energy required to fetch fuel, cost of fuel, and associated health implications.

The lesson encourages children to use their resources more sustainably, teaching them how to make the stoves, using materials available throughout Guinea Bissau. Children are also extremely effective agents of change, nagging their parents to adopt the new stoves.

The program targets the most vulnerable members of society, reducing women and children's daily chores, while bringing cost savings and health benefits. Effective environmental education in a country where formal education has gone up in smoke.

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A group of prominent ecologists and climate scientists have an important article coming out in tomorrow's issue of Science, in which they call for "fixing a critical climate accounting error." The error is ignoring a significant source of global warming pollution related to using biomass for energy ("bioenergy").

I know that most people's eyes glaze over whenever "accounting" is mentioned and others tune out when discussion turns to "climate," so the number of people interested in "climate accounting" may be vanishingly small. But this article is important and not as obscure as it sounds.  Getting the accounting wrong means that more CO2 is going into the air than we are acknowledging; and that worsens global warming.  CO2 has the same effect whether we count it or not, but we can't reduce emissions that we don't admit are happening. Global warming is too serious of a problem for us to use incomplete balance sheets.

The Science article points out that the climate legislation pending in Congress hasn't yet accounted properly for emissions from bioenergy.  We need to get this right so that climate legislation promotes bioenergy that helps us fight global warming rather than costs us forests.

This is where the principles of ecology come in. Barry Commoner annunciated five laws of ecology during the 1970s. The first two are:

The first law means that to understand the implications of using biomass for energy we can't just look at the impact on the land where the biomass came from, we also have to consider the ripple effects, whether on neighboring farms or forests half way across the world that are connected through global commodities markets. Remember, everything is connected to everything else.

A corollary of the second law is that everything has to come from somewhere. In the case of biomass, the carbon it contains comes from CO2 in the atmosphere. That's why there is an environmental opportunity in replacing fossil fuels with biofuels. But whether there are in fact net environmental benefits or costs depends on what would have happened to that carbon if it wasn't used for energy. Remember, everything has to come from somewhere.

The key sentence in the Science article is:

Bioenergy therefore reduces greenhouse emissions only if the growth and harvesting of the biomass for energy captures carbon above and beyond what would be sequestered anyway, thereby offsetting emissions from energy use.

In other words, the clean energy merits of biomass depend on the specifics of how it is harvested and how the land it comes from is managed.

The climate bills currently under consideration in Congress, however, fail to distinguish between the carbon footprint of burning biomass from a mature forest and burning crop waste. Instead, all "renewable biomass" is assumed to be carbon neutral and any biomass that isn't considered renewable is assumed to have no environmental benefits. As a result, there is a huge, if obscure, fight going on over exactly how "renewable biomass" should be defined in the legislation. The need for a more nuanced approach was flagged by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman and Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson, and needs to be addressed as clean energy and climate legislation moves through the Senate.

We have to get biofuels right to get the pollution reductions the clean energy bill is designed to achieve. Otherwise there will be a perverse incentive to clear forests for bioenergy production even if the net emissions are actually higher than from continuing to burn fossil fuels. This incentive will get larger over time as the cost of emitting fossil fuel CO2 rises as long as net emissions from bioenergy CO2 remain free.

The solution is to stop assuming that burning biomass is always carbon neutral and fix this climate accounting error by recognizing that everything is connected to everything else.

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“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO.

The basic idea is that this is (among other things) a battlefield robot that runs on biomass it harvests on the battlefield.  I can't imagine why anyone thought this thing might turn to corpse eating. I guess, in a way, robot cannibals are a green technology. Maybe Cyclone can merge with Skynet.

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Electric cars powered by the burning of biomass would "average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic ethanol" according to a recent study, and climate science guru James Hansen has declared implementation of biomass crucial to combating climate change, but those endorsements won't make a bit of difference if few bio-electricity plants are built due to pollution and sustainability concerns.

At least that's the state of play here in Massachusetts, where 5 biomass plants are proposed and face big hurdles. Two are further along than the rest: Russell Biomass proposes a 50 MW plant along the Westfield River in the south-central part of the state, and Pioneer Renewable Energy is proposing a 47 MW plant just east of Greenfield, Mass., near the Vermont border.

Western Massachusetts is an environmentally-minded region rich with wood resources (it's 70% trees), yet each proposal has attracted notable grassroots opposition, and for some good reasons. Russell's proposal is being opposed due to disputes over siting, pollution, and large water withdrawals from the Westfield, as outlined by Concerned Citizens of Russell. The Greenfield plant is opposed by a broad coalition of individuals, 450 of which packed a zoning board hearing recently, on pollution, trucking, and sustainabiiity questions.

In 2002 Massachusetts adopted a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to encourage the generation of clean, renewable electricity in the state using indigenous resources such as wind, solar, and biomass. Under this legislation, Massachusetts must generate 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2025. Which explains the state's enthusiastic support for these projects.

A resource assessment performed as part of the Massachusetts Sustainable Forest Bioenergy Initiative found that there is enough sustainable, harvestable wood within the state to meet the needs of a 150 MW facility. In their words, "Early studies indicate that as much as 4 million tons of woody biomass could be produced annually in Massachusetts, mostly from forests and forest products industries. Utilizing only half that volume for the production of electricity would represent an estimated 150 MW of renewable generation, and substantial rural economic development associated with the fuel supply."

So by their own math, 5 plants at 50 MW would exceed the sustainable wood supply. Presumably wood would also be imported? Another point of confusion for many citizens is if trees fix carbon, why do we want to burn so many for energy? While these questions could be adequately answered or at least attempted, the state has done itself no favors in terms of providing answers, and worse, recently put its foot in its mouth: asked at a recent hearing, a state forester admitted that they lack a definition or a sense of what "sustainable harvest" would look like.

The state also stumbled by approving Pioneer's Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) review without requiring an environmental impact report on the effects of the operation. Certainly, an examination of air pollution, particulates, trucking, and sustainable supply should be undertaken: so says a citizens' group that has now served the secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs with an intent to sue on this issue.

The proposals would be more palatable at least if they planned to capture heat for district heating or industrial use, but despite some rhetoric from the project proponets seemingly indicating a willingness, the reality appears to be that these plants will be focused solely on producing electricity, putting them at a very low efficiency rating (20 percent by many estimates vs 80 percent for combined heat and power) in terms of getting full value from the available BTUs of the feedstock. In the words of one opponent, "use the resource wisely or not at all."

Certainly biomass can be done right, generating both heat and power and at a community scale. A hospital in the city of Northampton, between Russell and Greenfield, has a biomass plant, but the scale is much more appropriate.

And that's what it boils down to in cases like this too often. Too much money is at stake to create sensible, appropriate projects, "renewable" or not, when there are shareholders to pay.

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In January, Barack Obama stopped by the Cardinal Fastener & Specialty Co. in Bedford Heights, Ohio, to promote his economic-stimulus plan. The company, which has manufactured parts for bridges and machinery since 1968, began three years ago to make giant nuts and bolts to hold together wind turbines.

During his visit, Obama cited the factory as evidence that "a renewable energy economy isn't some pie-in-the-sky, far-off future," and touted his plans to double the production of renewable energy in three years and create millions of new jobs in the process.

But Cardinal Fastener CEO John Grabner joined other members of the renewable-energy sector in Washington this past week to tell lawmakers and administration officials that the renewable electricity standard (RES) proposals now moving ahead in Congress will not get the U.S. anywhere near the president's goals.

Though they're pleased to see a federal RES moving forward in Congress, leaders in the clean-energy industry say those plans are way too weak. If the proposals aren't strengthened, the U.S. will lose jobs and economic opportunities to competitors abroad, people in the industry warn.

Clean-power advocates want an RES that requires 12 percent of power to come from renewables by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. They say ambitious near-term goals are particularly vital.

"Setting that bar is critically important," said Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D), who came to Washington, D.C., on June 4 to lobby for a high renewable standard. "If we are serious about getting to 25 percent renewables by 2025, we have to put our country on a trajectory to get there. We can't sell ourselves short by not shooting high enough."

The Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, which is moving through the House, would require only 6 percent renewables by 2012, and 20 percent by 2020. It would let 5 percent of the requirement be met through efficiency measures rather than actual new renewable capacity, and would let governors petition for a weaker standard if they believe their states can't meet the target. The bill originally had a higher standard, but moderate Democrats negotiated it down.

A plan now under consideration in the Senate would require only 3 percent renewables from 2011 to 2013, and 15 percent by 2021, with up to a quarter of that allowed to be met through efficiency. And even that weak RES is likely to have a tough time passing in the Senate.

In recent weeks, the American Wind Energy Association, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the Biomass Power Association, the Governors' Wind Coalition, and other renewable-energy groups and associations have come forward to argue that the current proposals won't help increase the growth of renewables. In fact, the goals for 2012 in the bills would just keep renewables on the path they're already on, doing nothing to increase their share of the market, clean-energy advocates argue.

To help get Congress on the right track, renewables advocates descended on Capitol Hill on June 4, meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), then hosting a press conference in the Capitol building. They were joined by Colorado Sen. Mark Udall (D) and Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley (D), who pledged to lead the push for a stronger RES.

"The leadership has told us that they understand what we're saying in terms of the numbers," said AWEA CEO Denise Bode. "We're going to work really hard to make that happen."

AWEA has been running a flurry of TV and print ads in the Washington area calling for a strong RES. The group spent $1.2 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 -- more than any other clean-energy entity, but far less than fossil-fuel interests.

The difference between the RES proposals in Congress and the RES the industry wants could be up to 70,000 jobs in the wind industry alone, AWEA estimates. The group also estimates that without an ambitious RES, 75 percent of jobs in the wind industry would be created outside the U.S. by 2020, leading to both Europe and China having more wind jobs than the U.S.

"Without a strong RES, the wind industry will lose half of its production and half of its workforce," said Don Furman, senior vice president at the wind company Iberdrola and president of AWEA.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy paints an even bleaker picture. Its analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill estimates that the original version would have created 297,000 new jobs in renewables by 2020, but the current version "barely opens the hiring office." The group doesn't believe the bill would stimulate any job growth beyond what's already on track to occur.

As for Cardinal Fastner, Grabner estimates that his company's staff could grow ten times in size by 2025 if a 25 percent RES is signed into law. While the firm still anticipates growth under the proposed RES, it's hoping for much more. It is currently deciding whether to branch out and build more factories in places like Colorado, where turbine-manufacturing company Vestas will soon have four new plants.

Obama's appearance at the factory helped make the company a poster boy for green jobs -- literally. Cardinal Fastener employees are featured in AWEA's print and TV ads, with the company touted for rebuilding the Amercian economy "one bolt at a time." And the Cardinal Fastener website proudly displays photos of Obama holding a big bolt.

Grabner is optimistic that Obama will flex his muscle and help get a stronger RES in place to meet the goals he laid out during his January visit. "I have a feeling he's going to weigh in at some point and give his message," Grabner told Grist. "I would think he could be that kind of guy."

-----

Watch Cardinal Fastener employees at work in this AWEA ad:

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The best and cheapest near-term strategy for reducing coal plant CO2 emissions without forcing utilities to simply walk away from their entire capital investment is to replace that coal with biomass (see here).

Today, Energy Daily ($ub. req'd) reports on the huge -- but little covered -- news from one of the nation's biggest carbon polluters:

This will become "the largest biomass facility in the United States," according to Southern Company COO Tom Fanning. And this is not the only biomass effort Southern Company is pursuing:

The huge advantage of biomass conversion or co-firing is that you don't have to build an entire planet from scratch, thus lowering the capital costs. Plus you already have the power plant sited and you have transmission sited and you have train lines and water supply. Plus this is new baseload renewable power -- arguably the most valuable commodity in the entire power sector these days.

And since biomass captures carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere during the process of growing, it is the only form of carbon capture that is likely to lead to deliver significant kilowatt-hours for the next one to two decades (see here).

So, again, this is, in the near term, the most practical and affordable strategy for utilities with coal plants that want to reduce CO2 emissions without simply writing off the entire value of their plant. Hence, this is a crucial strategy for coal-intensive utilities in the Southeast and Midwest that have long opposed renewable energy standards and climate action:

If this is to be a scalable medium-term solution, then the country will need to make an all out effort to develop cellulosic biomass for use in power plants. Even today, the resource is significant in the key regions:

Interestingly, the new biomass power plant will generate more electricity than the current coal-fired unit. Here are some interesting details from a 2008 story in Biomass magazine:

The key, of course, to make sure this is all done in the sustainable fashion. That will be the job of regulators and the Obama administration.

When I was at the Department of Energy, we were pursuing research into developing better fast-growing hybrid poplars, which are "the fastest growing hardwood trees available to homeowners and landowners in America and they are growing successfully from the Northern Gulf Coast to New England, throughout the Midwest and into the Northwest." They are a high-energy crop that "grow well on marginal land, so they don't take up valuable food-producing soil" (see here).

The fundamental reason biomass conversion and co-firing are a core climate solution is that anyone who can deliver considerable amounts of low carbon power for under $0.15 a kilowatt hour -- and especially if that is baseload power -- will be a major player in the transition to a low carbon economy. And if you can do that in regions of the country that don't have a vast solar resource suitable for concentrated solar thermal or wind -- and especially if it is closer to $0.10 a kilowatt hour -- then you will be doubly valuable.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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