The Information Available at the Time

There's a telling article in the RGJ about a wood-chip biomass power plant in Carson City. It begins:

An $8.3 million biomass plant expected to provide power for two Nevada state prisons has operated only sporadically because of a lack of wood used as fuel.

Nevada Department of Corrections officials had predicted the plant would replace energy from electricity and natural gas at Northern Nevada Correctional Center and the neighboring Stewart Conservation Camp. The plant has not run more than three days straight since it opened six months ago.

"Wood continues to be an issue for us," said Lori Bagwell, department director of support services. "We do not have an adequate and appropriate supply."

The department and Carson City Renewable Resources, hired to provide wood for the plant, said the problem is the lack of supply from the U.S. Forest Service.

The agency sometimes gives limbs and underbrush not used commercially and can be a fire hazard to services that recycle wood. This "biomass" usually is too expensive to move to Carson City to be processed.

"We have the supply," said Ed Monnig, forest supervisor of Humbolt-Toiyabe National Forest. "It's the cost of getting the wood to the plant that's the crux of the matter."

But the real kicker is towards the end of the article. There, after the problems are detailed, the response is:

A 2005 report by Phoenix-based APS Energy Services said the plant could be fueled by unusable wood. That is the same company that built the plant.

"Prior to the construction of the biomass plant at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, we worked with the correctional center to evaluate all factors related to the project, fuel source being one of those," said Damon Gross, an APS Energy Services representative.

"We believe the correctional center made the best decision for the state of Nevada taxpayers with the information that was available at the time the decision was made," Gross said. "We continue to work closely with the Northern Nevada Correctional Center during the final phases of startup."

I'd like to know what, precisely, changed in the available information since then. This sounds like a hollow excuse to me. One of the big, persistent, and predictable problems with projects like this is summed up nicely early in the article. "'Generally speaking,' Monnig said, 'the biomass itself isn't worth enough to pay its way off the mountain.'" There's a reason that wood (an obvious and abundant fuel) wasn't being used to generate power before this plant was built, and now that $8.3 million has been sunk into the project, it is becoming evident.

And, lest you think that the wood-chip-burning plant is at least environmentally friendly, remember this: the wood is being burned to get energy. Just like coal or oil. And just like coal or oil, it impacts the environment by releasing carbon that has been taken out of the atmosphere and stored in a solid form (in burning, the stored energy is unleashed as the complex carbon gets broken back down to CO2). My guess is that burning wood is, per unit of energy produced, not that more efficient (and maybe less efficient) than coal. If that's true, then the environment, the taxpayers, and pretty much everyone involved would have been better served by a coal-fired power plant. Good intentions can be such lovely paving stones on the road to perdition.